


Emotional Bias

by Ramabear (RyMagnatar)



Series: Admiral Ampora [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cybernetics, Death, F/M, Hacking, Horrorterrors - Freeform, Implied Torture, M/M, Manipulation, Mixed POV, NPC Death, Original Character(s), Second person POV, Third Person POV, space
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/Ramabear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation: </p>
<p>Time has passed since the exchange of Dave for Dirk. Eridan is on route to meet the empresses. Roxy, Dirk, and Eridan's relationship has developed to a close, intimate one. A boring trip through Known Space turns tragic at the revealed death of another and suspenseful when Dirk and Roxy receive direct communication from a surprising source. There are warning signs and telltale hearts, but with the finish line in sight, how can Dirk and Roxy stop themselves now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Irony is Seldom Absent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadameHardy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameHardy/gifts).



With one hand holding gently onto the railing, you floated perpendicular to the thick plastic like glass that served as a window between the room you were in and the airless vacuum of space outside. The view was studded with stars, some bluish, some reddish, and some close enough to give a softer, white glow. The local solar system had one large sun that was a little redder than the one back on Earth, but then, it was far closer to its death than that one.

Between where you were and the red sun was a small purplish planet. It had a cloudy surface, striped with different shades of purple and studded by the swirls of violent storms. There was another planet nearby, one that you were in orbit of, but you weren’t facing the right direction to see it.

Letting go of the railing, you let yourself float in the air as the container moved around you. You slowly floated upwards until you were lying on your back on what was the ceiling, relative to the door. Or perhaps it was the floor, as the container rotated around and the view of the purple planet became one of the planet you orbited.

Below, there was an atmosphere so thin that there were only faint wisps of weather like phenomenon. The land below the whitish fog was almost white as well, bleached by the sun’s UV rays over millennia.

How many billions upon billions of years had this solar system lived before you came here? Before anyone came here? Had these planets once held life on them?

The door to your right slid open and out floated your new best friend. She stood upright, relative to the door, but was upside down relative to you.

“Dave,” In any language, you could at least understand your own name. This Serket, however, was a considerate teacher and spoke her next words a little slower than she would to another troll. You were picking up the language quickly enough, but common dialogue speeds, in combination with colloquial habits made understanding troll-to-troll conversation tricky still. “I have someone I want you to meet. Will you come with me?”

You waited until the room had rotated around her and put you right side up with her. Then you pushed off the wall and reached for the railing, which was attached to the wall the door was part of, and did not rotate. “Who are we meeting, Serket?” you spoke in the same language as her. There were some hints of Ancient Alternian, as it was referred to, in this modern tongue, but it was more often a distraction than a tool.

She gave you that Serket smile that her ancestor had had. “I figured you would want a little more challenge with your studies. I’ve got you a new language teacher.”

“Ah. Excellent. I’ve always wanted to learn math.” You reply as deadpan as possible. You can still do that, thank god. There are a lot of things you can’t do like you used to do. Like talk to John. Or climb to the top of your apartment building. Or watch sunsets. There were no sunsets in space.

Serket seems amused by your joke and leads you out of the spinning hallway to a steady one. The gravity increases as you move closer to the far door until you’re forced to walk. You follow a half a step behind the commander, hands loose at your side and looking around. Everyone was used to you already, the slave who wasn’t a slave. Your near constant staring doesn’t  bring the heat down on you like it did when the station officers didn’t understand your particular position.

“It’s been quite an ordeal to get her here to teach you,” Serket said once the two of you had stepped into an elevator alone. “She had retired herself to a planet and refused my first two messengers. Then, when she finally did agree to come, it was another issue on how to get her at all.”

“Uh huh.” You replied, watching the glass window of the elevator. You prefer these ones, the ones that show you what’s going on outside. It showed how massive an undertaking the space station was. The other elevators, with solid metal walls, felt just like the ones back home which was so disorientating you hadn’t been able to use them after the first ride.

In the reflection of her in the glass Serket gave you a look that you did not like. It was that over-the-glasses, scheming look that Vriska had always given when she was going to pull one over on John. You turn to look at her. “What are you planning now.”

“This way,” She gestured as the doors opened. At first you were going to refuse, but then a glance to the elevator’s doors, or rather to the numbers at the top of them, gave you a far greater question. They read B1.

“Basement one?” You asked as you followed her into a hallway you had never seen before. Even the lights were slightly different. These halls seemed darker, rougher around the edges than the pristine walls above. “How does a space station have a basement? There’s no ground floor. There’s no B1 button in there.”

“Perhaps we decided to make floor zero the ground floor,” Serket said as you walked down the narrower halls, “Perhaps Holdfast was built upon a shell of another station instead of from scratch as it is believed.” She glanced at you over her shoulder as she stood outside a door. “Dave.”

You stopped. Your heart was pounding in your chest and your palms felt sweaty. You refused the urge of wiping them on your pant legs through years of sheer cool-kid habits. “Yeah.”

“This will be shocking to you. But keep in mind, not everyone ages well and we have done the best we can with what we have.” Serket spoke that with utter seriousness. Then she punched in a code to the keypad: 0 4 1 3.

The door slid open. She gestured for you to enter alone. Slowly, you obeyed.

First one step through the doorway, then the other. The room was lit in white and green lights and there was a faint beeping and breathing sound. As you walked further into the room, your eyes adjusted and caught on movement on a bed.

You didn’t even notice the door shutting behind you as you stared at the frail, old woman laying on the bed. Her skin seemed so thin that you could could almost see bones beneath, her fingers were knobby at the knuckles and her cheeks sagged on her face. Her eyes were closed, with large, round glasses perched on her nose. Multiple pillows held her up in a reclined position and several tubes ran from machines on the right of her bed and under the collar of her clothing. An all too familiar animal rested its white head on the side of her bed.

Your head spun. Your mouth fell open of its own accord.

“Jade?”

Bright green eyes flashed as they opened and looked at  you.

 

* * *

 

“See, and if you dig in your elbow right here...”

“Here?”

“Oh _god_ …” You groan loudly.

“Yup. Right there.”

You feel the dance of Roxy’s fingertips on your back as she guides Dirk through the lengthy back massage. She knew where all your knots were and had always done her best, but Dirk had a higher level of upper body strength and more weight to put behind his hands. You were a puddle of purple troll on your bed as a result of their combined efforts.

Roxy giggled as you let out another groan of pleasure. She brushed your hair out of your face and gently tugged on a fin. “Don’t fall asleep. We won’t know if we’re accidentally hurting you if you do!”

You groan in reply as Dirk’s fingers work up your spine, mindful of your gills and digging into the knots by your shoulderblades. You fade in and out of the conversation between your humans, fighting the desire for sleep that came from the massage, and the desire to roll over and engage them in something else entirely.

“... told me that this one was from when he was in the academy,” You hear Roxy saying. You can tell where her fingers are because they’re cooler than Dirks and the tip of her fingernail is smooth along your skin. “He was part of a prestigious house there and when you join you get this larger piece here. The more that you do  in the house, like the higher your rank? Then you get these little add ons with the color. It’s a shame that the color doesn’t stand out so clearly on his skin because…”

“...get one of those flex balls so you can keep the dexterity and strength in your hands. Though I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you were to stop in and work out from time to time with the rest of us humans. It’ll help with your bone density and…”

“...really doesn’t do much with it besides the same swept back look every day. You’d think that would get boring but then again I guess there’s a whole image that he’s been working on for four hundred years. You just think that…”

“...meet up with him again soon. I got word just the other day that they brought in the dog lady to see him. It’s not much, I know, but it’s only a little tidbit to help with morale. It’s been almost three years since we heard anything…”

“...to worry about it. I get comments all the time from the trolls. It’s their way of trying to get a flushed night stand or even just a little more attention. I just can’t believe they want a tumble with an old gal like me!” Roxy’s laughter brought you back out of your sleepy haze and you blinked, lifting your head up. Dirk’s hands weren’t doing much more than a gentle massage now. Small circles up and down your back to keep you calm.

“Punch ‘em,” You say, propping your chin on a hand. “They give you any lip at all, Rox, an’ you give’m a solid punch to the gut. Avoid the face though. You could cut a lip or your knuckle on a tooth and spilt blood is a report that has to be written up.” You blink sleepily up at them. Roxy smiles and Dirk’s fingers rub at the base of your skull.

“Permission to punch those who give unwanted solicitation accepted, sir,” Roxy gave a quick salute and then bent down to kiss your temple. “Did you sleep well, Eridan?”

“Mm.” You slowly push yourself up, giving Dirk enough time to get to the side of you. Sitting up, you run a hand through your hair and blink some more. “Remind me to order a bigger bed. This one is getting crowded.”

“Aww.” Roxy pouted, “I like it. It’s cozy! Plus it has so many good memories…” She fluttered her lashes at you, getting an amused snort and shake of your head in retort.

“Then you can replace your bed with this one,” you say, “But I want a bigger bed.”

“Aye aye,” Roxy said, “I’ll look into it when we stop for supplies again.” She scratched at her head, “When is that again?”

“I’ll have to look but--”

“Forty one days,” Dirk said suddenly, “It’s the last stop before our destination.”

Roxy’s eyes sparkled as she clasped her hands together in front of her. “Oh, Mother Earth! I have always wanted to see her!”

“We’re only headed to the Jupiter Ganymede outpost,” you say, “And we’ll be going too fast past Earth to get a good look at it… Oh Rox, don’t give me that look.” Her eyes are watering as she looks at you, lower lip trembling.

“But… But Eridan, honey,” She inched closer, “Please. I just want to see it before I get old. We don’t have to stop there or anything like that… I just want to see the little blue planet!”

Sighing, you glance to Dirk. “I suppose you want to see it too, don’t you?”

His gaze darts down as he ducks his head, but he quickly nods as well. “Please, Admiral.”

You lift his chin with one hand and hold Roxy’s with the other. “Look at me, both of you.” When you have their undivided attention, you say, “If you’re both good, I promise we’ll orbit the Earth so you can get a look at the whole thing. If you’re really, really good, we’ll stop at the moon and go out onto the surface so you can look at it from there.”

“Oh thank you!” Roxy throws her arms around you and hugs you tightly, littering your face with kisses. The force of her hug pushes you back against Dirk, who supports you silently with an arm around your lower back. You feel his warm fingertips at your hip and a quick, hesitant kiss at your temple.

You hold tighter onto Roxy.

Your humans were so very precious to you.

 

* * *

 

Practically lounging in your captain’s chair, you’re more intent on the tablet in your hands than what is going on around you. Your course is through a well documented part of space and the station you’re headed to is still a long ways off. The sounds of computers chiming and the occasional intra-bridge communication is a lull in the background. You’d almost be dozing if you hadn’t slept so well last night.

“Admiral,” A clear voice cut through the idle thumb tapping game you were playing. You think Roxy installed it on your device, she was fond of crushing candies together. “We’re being hailed.”

“What?” You look up from the game, ignoring it completely now. You set the tablet down. “Full Display.”

The center screen of the main computer opens a small window that quickly enlarges to take up the whole screen. On the left screen the ship’s systems are still being monitored and on the right is the radar blip that shows the hailing ship barely at the edge of your ship’s awareness.

The image is fuzzy, slipping in and out like a bad transmission that you remember seeing in movies back when you still watched such tripe. “Hello?” The voice says over and over. The face on the screen is human, wide eyed and frightened looking. Bright blue eyes are behind broken glasses and the woman briefly looks down at the controls, mutters under her breath and flips a few switches. “Hello? Is anyone there? Please. Please, can you help us?”

If you had a better memory of John, you’d almost recognize that voice and that face, but you don’t. John was barely a person in your mind now, as he’d been mostly an annoyance and a problem when you’d known him. This woman is bleeding, though the blood is hard to see against her dark skin.

“Have we established two way communication?” You ask and get a nod and a “Yes, sir” for your question. Leaning forward in your chair, you press the button that will transmit your voice across miles of space. “Hello. Your communication has been picked up by the Alpheus, under the command of Admiral Ampora. What has happened? Who is your captain?”

The woman was visibly weeping and wiping at her eyes with shaking hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. I woke up in the middle of everything. My captain… Oh gods…” She pulled away from the screen and there was a brief shot of her tottering away before she reappeared again.

“He isn’t in here.” She said, “Everyone in here is dead, and he isn’t in here.” She leaned in, her face taking up more of the screen, “Everyone is dead. I can’t get out the door is locked and the computer won’t let me out. I can’t make the computer listen to me!” Her voice rose shrilly and the screen shook as though she were physically shaking the communicator.

“Calm. Down.” You said, speaking calmly. “We’re going to come close and orbit your ship. Our computer will connect to yours and we’ll see what we can find. It will take a moment.”

“Everyone is dead!” She wailed, pulling away from the screen.

“Ma’am.” You said, almost shouting. “Come back to the screen please.” Without knowing what caused this disaster, you didn’t want her wandering around the bridge of the ship, shouting and wailing. “Can you do that? Come back and talk to me.”

She appeared again, her black hair wild around her face as though she had been pulling at it. “I’m back.”

“What is your name?” You bring your voice down to a calm level. “Who are you?”

“Jane,” She said, her voice trembling. “My name is Jane.”

There was a small murmur between the trolls in your bridge and you glance over. One turns in her seat and says, “Admiral, we’ve identified the ship. It’s the Basteta.”

There was silence as you stared at her and then slowly turned towards the screen again. The woman was looking back and forth at you, but with your finger off of the button, she hadn’t heard those words. “Jane,” you say with the button pressed, “try to stay calm. We are almost there and we’ll have you transported out and into a safe place in just minutes. All right? Do you understand?”

You didn’t keep all the strain out of your voice because she looks fervently at you and whispers, “They’re all dead, aren’t they? You got into the computer and you can see it. Everyone is dead but me,” tears stream down her cheeks and she lowers her head until you can only see the top and back of it, as well as one of her arms. Her fingers are twisted in her black curls, but you can still see the navy blue ring on her left ring finger. She doesn’t say another thing, just weeps as you near the Basteta.

Your communications officer turns the sound down and makes her screen smaller, so it is just one window among many on the screen. You sit back in your chair, stomach churning, tablet forgotten. “Have we synced yet?”

“Eighty five percent now,” comes a voice. You don’t look away from the screen. You’re not looking at Jane, but at another window that’s been pulled up. The images of known crewmembers as well as short bios scrolls slowly in one of the windows. At the top of the window the file says _Basteta’s Crew Under the Captain Equius Zahhak._

“After all this time,” you whisper to yourself, “Did it have to end like this? What happened to the retirement to a ranch with nothing but green hills as far as you could see?”

“Admiral,” the voice is shakey. You are not the only one affected by the weeping woman.  “We’re in range for transport.”

“Sync is at ninety seven percent. Ninety eight. Ninety nine. One hundred. Scanning for life signs, final recordings and damage now.”

The feeling of the room is tense and somber. It was rare to find a ship with few survivors on it. Most damage was all or nothing when it came to a space ship. It was even more rare to find a crew nearly decimated in _known_ space. This was supposed to be safe territory. Settler ships and recreational visits occurred in this airspace all the time.

There’s a feeling in your gut that keeps twisting in on itself, over and over, round and round, until your insides are so knotted you feel like you can’t even breathe. Leaning back further in your seat, you cover your mouth to muffle the soft gasping sounds. _Equius fucking Zahhak…._ He had been so healthy, the last time you saw him, driven to work and work hard.

You could still remember the party in his honor when he’d been awarded a Captain’s chair. Many hadn’t believed it possible, including Zahhak himself, but his determination and meticulous work had won out in the end.

Sure, he didn’t have a sleek machine at first, and much of his crew were those who didn’t quite work on regulation starships… But within a decade, Zahhak’s Basteta was a beast of a ship and the crew lived and died at his word, so intense was their loyalty.

He had been just as loyal to them, and as protective as one was with their moirail.

“Bring Jane aboard,” your voice sounds distant to you, “put her in quarantine, get her a complete physical check up and send a crew of six to extract further information, including the body of the Captain. I want a complete containment of everything brought over from that ship.

“Is there any clue on what happened?” You ask, turning at last to look away from that list of dead. “Anything at all?”

“Sir, it’s the damndest thing,” the officer replied, not looking away from the computer. “I’m getting data files, but they don’t say that any system failures have occurred. The hull is intact, life support systems are functioning, the engine core is sealed and active. There are no emergency communications. Even the one from the human isn’t on an emergency frequency.” Files and information zip past his eyes and those of the two trolls on either side of him as they review the lines of text with him.

“I want that information checked on the Basteta as well,” you say brusquely, getting to your feet. “Check also what is registered in their hold. Something happened. An entire crew does not simply fall over dead for no fucking reason.” You walk up to the glass display and tap on the small image of the Basteta floating in space.

The window quickly becomes the only one on the screen and with a flick of your fingers you enlarge it. There is a small cloud of debris to one side of the ship and it was tilted to its side, as though it had been stopped when an explosion occurred and the force of it had changed its orientation. “Something definitely happened. And someone fucked with the computers on board. Tell the boarding team to be extremely careful. Keep in a trio and tread carefully.”

You narrow your gaze, staring at the ship. “Who the fuck did this to you, Zahhak?” You whisper softly. “Who fucked you up?”


	2. The Oldest and Strongest Emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vengeance. Lust. Fear. These emotions are as strong as they are old. When tragedy strikes those you know and care for, it is easy to swear to avenge their spilled blood, their lost lives. Even in the midst of violence and shock, the body can crave the intimate and physical affection of your lovers. In the darkness of night, when you are away from the horror and your adrenaline has passed, fear can make a fool of you.

It doesn't take very long to get the woman into the medical bay, but you still pace the bridge for what feels like hours as you wait for the message that she’s been cleared for contagions. Old memories of the horrors you’ve seen growing out in space come crawling into the back of your mind and you have to shake your head. This was _known space._

Horrors didn't crawl around in known space. They had been burned out as a precaution before settlers, before visitors were allowed.

_But_ , a little voice in the back of your mind murmured, _that doesn’t mean they can’t grow back._ You walk back to your seat and pick up your tablet again. It only takes a few taps before you get to the historical archives that correspond to these coordinates.

You’re only a few paragraphs, not even past the area descriptions, in when there’s a pop up on the tablet screen. You tap it and up comes the face of your medical officer. She is a narrow faced troll, with small eyes and tightly pursed lips. “Sir,” She speaks clearly, her green eyes almost unblinking. “The woman has been decontaminated, examined and isolated. She is ready for interrogation.” She tilts her head to one side briefly and says with a sharp smile. “I mean questioning, sir. Forgive me.”

“Excellent.” You ignore her purposeful slip up. “I’ll have Charly come down to question her. Thank you for your work, Sancha.” You end the communication and stand up. Harket, you have command of the bridge. We’re to maintain our current range with Basteta, and I want to be notified if anything comes from our exploratory team.”

“Aye Admiral,” The blueblood said as he stood up. He took your seat as you left the bridge, stepping into the elevator with your hands behind your back. You were curious to see what the human had to say for herself and for what happened to the crew of the Basteta.

The elevator dropped you off at the right floor and you stepped out. Passing trolls hard at work, many greeting you as you passed, you kept your mind focused on what lay ahead. As you turn the corner towards the medical bay, you run into Charly. A red eyed, hulking troll, Charly had the appearance of a meat packer, a thug stationed at the bottom rung of the security ladder but the intelligence glimmering in his eyes belied that he was all brawn and no brains. When he met you in the hall he snapped a sharp salute. “Admiral,” He said gruffly. “I take it we’ll have the pleasure of your oversight during this questioning?”

“Zahhak was a personal… contact of mine,” you reply. Friend was too strong a word for the polite cordiality that was your relationship with Equius. “I’d like to hear first hand any account of his demise.”

“Aye,” Charly nodded, “Then we should hurry in and start right away. The longer we have only questions, the wilder the rumors become.” With that, he led the rest of the way to the medical bay.

You were greeted by a pair of assistants, one of whom went to fetch Sancha, and the other led them to the quarantined woman. “Here,” the assistants said, pushing over two chairs. “Sit if you’d like.”

You take a seat but Charly walks close to the edge of the plastic translucent wall and stares inside. The woman, Jane, is dressed in a shapeless not-quite-green dress. There’s a small bed in the quarantined area, but not much else. Jane sits on the bed, her legs folded together and her hands in her lap. The dress has ridden up above her knee, showing more skin of her legs than covering it.

Giving those legs only a cursory glance, you study her face instead. It is a pretty face, with her eyes no longer wide and frightened. She stared down at her hands, blinking slowly, with her dark hair framing a round face.

Sancha steps up beside you. “She can’t see you watching her.” Sancha reaches out and points to a dial on the wall beside the plastic barrier. “It’s set as one way observation right now. She can neither hear nor see us.”

And yet, the blue eyed woman looks up and you swear that she’s meeting your gaze. Charly, your security officer, reaches for the dial and turns it forty five degrees. A thin red line appears on the plastic wall, showing where the wall has now become see through. Dropping his hand down slightly, Charly taps the intercom button. “Miss Jane, may I please have your attention.”

Slowly, the woman looks up. She blinks as though she’s in a dreamy state and gently nods her head.

“The doctor should have given you a small device,” Charly said, “It should have a speaker and a button on it, so that you can communicate back to me. I need you to locate that and respond.”

She did, reaching across the bed to where she must have left it earlier. Pushing the button she spoke, “Hello.”

You sit back in your chair, only watching. From your position, the woman cannot see you as she answers Charly’s questions. You lean one elbow on the arm of the chair and hold your chin in your hand. Your thumb taps along your jaw and you listen as Charly gently extracts the information he wants.

Jane knew very little as she had been sleeping when the damage had been done.

Why had she been asleep?

Her work was very irregular. She was either attending to the Captain in his quarters or was at his side to assist him in person.

She was a direct assistant to the Captain? What was her title on the ship?

She had been purchased and given as a gift to the Captain. Her title was Assistant and was to be used as the Captain saw fit.

Charly asked for her to recount the last full day of time, not including the time she had been asleep.

Slowly, as though in pain just from the thoughts, Jane recounted her last day aboard the Basteta.

* * *

_ Equius Zahhak was the beginning and the end of your world. _

When you wake in the artificial morning, determined by the internal clock of the computer and the steady growing light of your bedroom, his shape and the cool temperature of his skin is the very first thing that you encounter. Your hand moves through the covers and touches his back.

He sleeps on his stomach, when he sleeps at all, because he cannot move once you have done your work on him and exhaustion takes him. You, on the other hand, sleep on your side, your body half curled up and your blankets clutched tightly around you. By the end of the night, the bed has absorbed your warmth and the only cold thing left under the covers is him.

You never purposefully wake him, though when you reach out to touch him for comfort, he inevitably stirs, snorts and wakes. Equius lays, blinking, for a moment before he pushes himself up with one arm. His muscles flex with every movement, and you watch in delight. Only in bed is he naked like this. Only in bed do you get the marvelous view of watching his muscles ripple just when he moves.

Under your gaze, a damp sweat gathers on his skin, for even a captain can be self-conscious, and he usually leaves the bed quickly. Dressing in specially designed clothing, Equius is soon ready to leave the bedroom, with pants on, belt buckled and long sleeved shirt pulled on. When he sits down to put on his shoes, you fetch the brush and take care of his long black hair.

His hair is long and straight where yours is short and curly. You hardly ever brush your own hair outside of a wet shower, but his needs daily attention. It is your nimble fingers that weave the long locks into a loose braid that starts at the base of his skull and drops down to end between his shoulder blades.

When you’ve finished, he reaches his hand out to you and you lay your cheek against his palm. His gestures are always like this, tender and half formed, and full of the fear of breaking you somehow. So you lay your cheek against his palm and kiss the base of his thumb and he smiles in gratitude.

He leaves the room afterwards, to begin his duties, and often you return to sleep. Your presence on the ship is required only by him and only at specific times. Yes, you have your hobbies and yes, you have those on the ship you are friendly with, but you also love your dreams.

In your dreams, your family is all still alive… You tell this Charly all of these things, except for this dream.

_The morning of the accident was just like this,_ you explain with tears in your throat. You had kissed your captain goodbye and returned to your bed. When you had woken up, there was a strange shaking to the ship, a shuddering sound like metal being scraped against something. You woke frightened and hurried to dress. When you brought up the computer to try and communicate with anyone, there were no danger screens, no flashing alarms. Yet, you could not contact anyone in the bridge, or engineering, or storage, or medic bay, or quarters, or kitchen, or dining hall. The computer recognized your commands, and you could connect to these locations, but there was only silence on the other end.

Here, you stop to shudder for the good Charly and he nods, listening intently, and motioning for you to continue.

You made it out of the bedroom. The captain’s room was set apart from the other quarters and was just down the hall from the bridge. As you walk there, the ship shakes and groans again. You don’t know how to describe this feeling exactly, but it’s like the ship is lurching about.

Charly turns his head slightly to listen to someone. You don’t recognize the faint voice. You would recognize it if it was Sancha, the medical officer. You wonder who it could possibly be- and then, of course, you remember.

Admiral Ampora. Your Equius had known him well and for years and years…

You blink. Fresh tears run down your cheeks. The admiral cared so much for Equius he would come listen to your story in person? Your heart warmed, touched by emotion. The admiral had a personal interest in little old you?

Charly mentions for you to continue, so you do. The bridge, you say, is not empty, but it might as well be. There were bodies about and the computers were sputtering with electricity. Equius was not there. Why he was not, you could not say, but his second in command sat in his chair. Her head was slumped forward, her chin resting on her chest, and at first it appeared as though she were only sleeping.

In fact, it appeared as though they were all sleeping. You remember wondering if this was some bizarre dream. You waited to see if things would suddenly shift or start making utterly no sense, but nothing does. It was not a dream.

Terror grew in you, rising like bile in your throat. You hurried to a disposal chute to vomit but it would not open so you vomited instead on the floor in front of it. By now, you were weeping and trying to figure out what to do besides curl up into a ball.

_There were no alarms,_ you say to Charly. You know how you must look, eyes wide and shimmering with tears, nose red, lower lip trembling. You hug your arms around yourself for a better effect and are delighted when you see Charly’s pupils dilate slightly. He likes the weakness you display. Most trolls do, you’ve discovered.

_The worst part,_ you say with your voice shaking, _is that there were no alarms._ Not one blaring console, not one beeping monitor, not even a repeating computerized voice. _Nothing_. If not for the bodies and the occasional sparking of one or two broken screens, there was nothing visibly wrong.

You don’t remember how long it took you to try and use the long distance communicator. Even though you were only a human, and only a human slave to your Captain, you still had learned some things. Equius was nothing if not careful. He made sure that everyone aboard his ship had the ability to use specific parts of the ship’s software, and those communicators was one of them.

It wasn’t long after you had started to use it that you got a blip on the radar. You hadn’t known at the time that it was the Admiral, only that any other ship had to be a friendly ship in this part of space, and so you reached out.

The trauma had returned to you, fresh and new, when you had finally reached the Admiral. That was why you had wept before him. Shock had made you numb and contacting someone else had driven you out of that shock.

Here, you put your face in your hands and weep more. _Oh_ , you cried out, _oh what could have happened? What had happened to your Captain, your Equius!_

Charly closed the viewport shortly thereafter, but you knew what quarantine cells looked like. They could still see you from the other side. You continued to weep and weep until you were exhausted. Then, at last, you curled up on your side on your bed to sleep.

* * *

You are grim after Charly closes the observation window and turns to look at you. Arms folded across your chest, you watch the woman silently as she continues to cry. Eventually, you stand. You feel cold, in your chest and in your gut, and it is not because of your natural chilly temperature. “This wasn’t an accident. This was sabotage.”

Charly nods. “We can investigate it, sir, but we’ll need a few days.”

You look to Sancha, “How long is she to be quarantined for?”

“Protocol puts it between ten to twelve days, depending on where she was discovered. How long shall we quarantine her for, Admiral?”

“Twelve days,” you say to her. To Charly you say, “You have twelve days to pull out everything that could relate to what happened. Put it all in one of the storage bays, one that we can jettison the contents of if so need be. After that we have to leave this part of space.”

They nod their agreement to your commands. Charly leaves quickly to get started and Sancha, after a pause, drifts back over to her work at another table. You step closer to the quarantine wall and look in at the weeping woman. “Don’t worry,” you whisper, even though you know she can’t hear you. “I promise to find out who and what killed him. Equius’s death will not remain a mystery. I _promise_.”

 

* * *

The scrap salvaged from the Basteta fills up over half of storage bay three. Looking from the other side of a see through wall, you could watch your crew rearrange all the pieces that had been brought on board. From computers, equipment and the charred containers that were the cargo of the desolate ship, there are piles of things to sort through. The electronic salvage takes longer than the body salvage, though, as the parts are more delicate than the dead crew members of the Basteta.

The dead crew are left in a container without atmosphere and below freezing temperatures. They won’t rot that way, lasting indefinitely until they can be shipped to their proper burial sites. Out of the small, one hundred and sixty troll and twenty-four human crew, only thirty five bodies were recovered and only Jane had survived.

Jane: the human woman who had not spoken since that first day, who wept and slept and ate so little that Sancha had a permanent furrow between her brows over the woman. Yes, she had told you, of course she could keep Jane alive with nutrient supplements, but the psychological effects she was seeing did not bode well for the human’s long term recovery.

Resting your hand on the wall of the room, you could feel the thrum of energy in your ship. It was like a heartbeat, pulsing through the metal and telling you that she was alive and that she moved smoothly through space. You thought often about Jane’s words. The shuddering of the ship. How it had groaned. How it had wrenched under her feet.

It was clear the computers had been tampered with, but what had pulled apart the ship itself? What had left it that cloud of debris in space? What had made the metal panels float like boards of wood on the ocean’s surface when a ship of timber and tar had hit rock?

This, you think as you watch your engineers begin to set things out in wider and wider circles of importance, is not something you excel at. Organizing, analyzing. No, this was to be left to your techs. Your greens and yellows and the psionics among them who had a taste for this kind of digging. So you stood behind the clear wall and watched in silence.

Silence that seemed to stretch on and on, even after you had gained company.

Your mind had wandered far away from the rubble before you by the time that you blinked, turned and looked to see Dirk standing at your side, silently watching the storage bay. When you look at him, he looks back and tilts his head to one side. “It’s dinner time. Are you hungry?”

You sigh. “I suppose.” Glancing back to the storage bay you murmur to yourself, “Not much I can do at this point.”

Turning on your heel, you walk down the hall to the elevator. Dirk follows a half a step behind you. “Roxy is waiting for us in the dining hall. She’s reserved a particular booth.”

You glance over your shoulder, cocking an eyebrow. “Why? She knows I prefer to eat in private.”

Dirk shrugs. “She only winked at me when I asked, sir.”

“Well. That does sound like her.” You fold your arms once in the elevator. The trip from storage to the living deck is long enough for you to call into the bridge and ask about your course and current ETA.

“We’re steady, Admiral,” Came the clear reply from the evening shift navigational officer, “We’re three hundred and thirty hours from our destination. Give or take a few here or there according to gravitational activity.”

“Thank you,” You close the connection and step out of the elevator. There are others of your crew on this deck and they salute as you pass. Stepping into the dining hall, you immediately scan the room for Roxy.

You catch sight of her blonde hair and discover she is not alone. Upon your approach, you catch the tail end of the conversation. “...really value your approach on this,” Doctor Sancha was saying, hands folded together on top of the table.

Roxy, opposite her, was sipping a drink of five different colors, smiling with ruby red lips and sparkling eyes. She let go of the straw she was drinking from and nodded. “I will certainly do my best. Shall I report as early as possible?”

Sancha nodded, “I’ll have her out of quarantine tonight so she’ll be more comfortable to see you tomorrow.” she too was smiling and that furrow of worry and annoyance between her brows had faded somewhat. Pushing up from the table, she stood and suddenly saw you standing by. “Admiral! I apologize. I was just leaving.”

You arch an eyebrow, open your mouth to reply but Sancha has ducked her head in a little bow and hurried away already. You’re left staring at Roxy, who scoots over in the booth and pats the cushion beside herself. “Have a seat.”

“What was that about?” You ask as you sit down beside her. She continues to scoot and you automatically follow her in until Dirk is sitting on your other side, silent and resting his elbows on the table.

“The human woman recovered from that ship has stopped responding entirely to Sancha’s efforts. She just looks at Sancha and bursts into tears.” Roxy says softly, toying with the bendy end of her straw. “Sancha is a blueblood, just like that woman’s past owner was. It could be the blue of her is triggering to the woman. In a situation like this, it’s easy for a human who was so attached to their troll to have a breakdown and be unable to interact with trolls at all.” Her eyes grew sad as she looked down at her drink, “It often makes them unable to be paired with another troll. That leaves only two options for humans like that…”

There’s a heavy silence. You reach a hand out and put it over Roxy’s hands. “I know you’ll do your best, Rox,” You whisper, “And you’ll get her eating and responding again. You have a way of cheering anyone up.”

Roxy smiles at you again, but it’s still a sad one.

Dirk clears his throat. “Roxy, I’ve got a question… What’s going on tonight?”

Almost immediately, she brightens up. “Oh! That’s right!” Clapping her hands together she says, “Happy Anniversary!”

You groan and put your hand over your face. “I completely forgot!”

“That’s okay honey,” Roxy pats your arm. “It’s been a very busy time for you, and very stressful! You can’t be expected to be on top of everything all the time!” Then she leaned in, waggling her eyebrows and putting her hand to her mouth as if to covertly whisper, “But I do have some hope you’ll be on on top of someone later on!”

You can’t help but laugh. The ridiculous waggle of her eyebrows has always been funny to you and perhaps always will be. That’s all it takes for you to be so much more aware of the present moment, aware of how her knee is up against yours and how Dirk’s arm is near yours. You can feel their warmth and it’s not just a physical heat. “We’ll see about that,” you smile back to her, “First, I need something to drink and something to eat. I am suddenly ravenous.”

All Roxy did then was raise one slender hand and wiggle her fingers. Within seconds there was food and drink delivered to the table by bowing staff and she was up against your side, picking from your plate and giggling. Dirk was no less flirtatious, in his own way. After two years in each other’s company, you were as familiar with him as you had once been with Dave.

After all, you had only had a few years with Dave. How many you can’t quite remember anymore, but it was more than two and less than five.

When you feel Dirk’s hand on your thigh, rubbing gently through the fabric of your pants, and his nudge from shoulder to shoulder so you turn and try some of his dish as well, you feel confident that you’ll keep Dirk at your side longer than you ever had Dave.

Tucked into the corner of the restaurant, tucked between your moirail and your Strider-look-alike, you forget the stress of your ship, of Basteta’s early demise, of Equius’s body floating and lost in space, of the empresses’ demands, of your time constraints, of your mission and your past. All that matters is the sweet taste of Roxy’s lips and the firm grip of Dirk’s hand and the spread of food and drink that fills your body fit to burst

It’s with one arm around Roxy and the other around Dirk that you make it back to your quarters, laughing. You barely notice it, but your bright mood has influenced the morale of your crew. The dining hall you leave behind is loud with singing and clapping from an impromptu dance battle.

Before long, you’re stumbling into your quarters, past the main room and into the bedroom. Clothing has been shed since the front door opened and ends, somehow, with your boots as the last thing to remove. Roxy is laughing so hard she can’t undo the laces by herself. You sit up to try and help but Dirk’s well placed hand and mouth completely distract you away from that.

Eventually the boots are gone along with everything else.

* * *

 

With the room lit up with the blue light of a computer screen, it takes you a moment for your eyes to adjust when you hear movement from the bed and look up. Your heart leaps in your chest, but it’s only Dirk. He’s adjusting the blankets, pulling them from around himself and putting them around Eridan. As he slips out of the bed, carefully climbing over Eridan, the troll grumbles in his sleep and curls around a pillow. “Patch’m,” you whisper.

Dirk complies. He digs one out of the drawers and applies it to the back of Eridan’s shoulder. Eridan mumbles again and then settles down to his low snoring, his face smooshed against the pillow. You find it charming that such a powerful troll could so easily be reduced to the same squashed face as a sleeping toddler.

Dirk settles onto the chair beside you, one leg bent and up against his chest, the other dangling off the edge of the chair. Glancing to the utterly asleep Eridan, he gives you a quick grin, “Sopor- Mommy’s little helper.” His hair is messy from sleep, pushed to one side and scraggly. You spare a moment to fuss at it. He rolls his eyes at you as he opens his own computer.

The laptop he used was identical to your own, same games, applications, films and even the webcam embedded in the top of the screen. Except the exterior of his was bronze colored where yours was classic white and a multitude of stickers. The operating system was supposed to be isolated from the ship’s main computer. Humans were trusted in the bed, but not on the net. You didn’t blame them. Dirk pulled up an application, typed a few key phrases and the delightsome background of some distant ocean was instantly replaced with a black background with a symbol in the center. The laptop had a secondary operating system.

Your own computer screen was far more cluttered than his, but beneath all your files was a black background and the icon of a four eyed kitten’s head. It was even animated so that occasionally the eyes would wink. You were just moving a few files so you could see that adorable feature when an explosion of color started in the bottom of your screen and flooded its way across.

Roses of lilac and blue blossomed from one corner, across the middle and to the opposite corner. They were woven out of wool, but since they were digital, they went from small buds to large blooms in seconds. As they began to unravel, you looked to see that they grew across Dirk’s screen as well. He held perfectly still, fingers poised over his keyboard automatically. You reached out and put a hand on his arm.

When the flowers had passed, you  were left in silence for a long moment.

A folder sat in the middle of your screens, your previous files had all been pushed to the edge so that there was no mistaking this new file. The icon in the background of your screen, once your beloved kitty, was now a blossomed rose with spikes along the outer petals. Dirk had the same image on his screen. The files themselves had two different names. Yours said _Mountain of Madness_ while Dirk’s file was titled _Shadow Over Ganymede_.

“Always with the dramatic flair.” Dirk said with a sigh. He moved to click on the folder but your hand tightened on his arm and stopped him.

“She’s in the computers,” you said softly. “She’s in the computer of the Alpheus. Dirk, she’s never gotten into the Alpheus before.”

“What? But you’ve been here for years. How has she never…”

Pulling your hand back, you open another window and begin the digital trace. Roses like those did not blossom on their own. They had to have come from somewhere. “Even with the supercomputer she’s got, it takes so much time and energy to get across space and into the computer that she’s never bothered. They just put me here instead, because I can manage one ship’s incoming and outgoing traffic and work with the information directly.” Your fingers flew across the keys as you backtracked through the digital roots.

“And Alpheus has never been near enough to her homeworld for her to send anything out to it,” Dirk said, nodding his head in understanding, “Eridan’s activity is rarely in livable space, but on the outskirts. Of course just having one of us physically here is enough.” He waited for you to finish typing, keeping his hands from his own computer.

“It can’t be anything that was here before. I had to be that other ship…” Focused, your thoughts became murmurs under your breath. “Why was she on that ship? How did she get there? They’ve been analyzing that tech for a week and I’ve heard myself that they haven’t found anything wrong with the computer system.” You stopped suddenly, fingers poised over the keys and eyes wide. A spark of thought left your mouth hanging open.

“Rox?” Dirk’s voice was strained.

“We’ve had that computer scrap in the hull for what, a week?” You said when you finally gained control of your tongue again, “It wouldn’t have taken a week for her to get through the Alpheus once she was connected. Maybe a few hours, at most.” Tapping a few more keys brought up the video feed of a room. It was that sterile white and metal with the occasional blue monitoring screen. Computers slept, the room was mostly empty. There was one attendant, in clear view of the camera, who was working away on her computer, yawning as she did so. In the far side, you  could see covered feet on a bed. Panning the camera, you brought it to look at the sleeping woman, Jane.

You had to refocus the lens. “She has something,” You whispered, “She has something on her like a flash drive or…” your voice fell away.

Jane, the supposedly sleeping woman, slept on her side, curled up tightly under her covers. Behind her, a soft yellow lamp bathed her backside in light and cast her front in shadow. You stared at the woman’s face. Dirk, beside you, watched intently as well.

After a moment, bright blue eyes opened and looked up at the camera. In the darkness around her face, they glowed. Slack jawed, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the image.

After a few seconds, a blue light at the top of your computer lit up. Without even thinking about it, Dirk slammed the laptop shut.

“ _Dirk_!” Hissing you grabbed his wrist and pulled at his hand. He resisted. “Dirk, get off! Why did you do that?”

“Yeaah, Dirk…”

They both froze and turned in unison. In the low light, Eridan’s purple eyes reflected silver. He had pushed himself upright with one arm and blinked slowly, staring at them. “Yeahh…” He muttered again. A frown crossed his features and you were half out of your seat, words of explanation budding on your tongue as Eridan threw off his covers and got to his feet. Meeting him at the side of his bed, Eridan stumbling into your arms. What he mumbled against your shoulder almost made you weep with relief, “Gotta pee…”

“Let me help you to the bathroom, you drunk troll,” you said with forced humor. Putting your his arm over your shoulders, you helped him from the room. Glancing back, you said to Dirk, “Don’t do anything foolish now…”

“Yeaah…” Eridan said as he stumbled from the room.

Dirk sighed, leaning back in his chair. He moved his cursor over to the folder and let it hover there, waiting.

“Fuck it.” He opened the folder.

 

 


	3. Searchers After Horror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roxy and Jane meet and talk. Dirk joins the discussion. Sparked by fear and curiosity, another conversation bursts into fleeting physical violence. Eridan has a private meeting.

 

Nervousness grows in your belly like a dozen wriggling worms splitting and multiplying over and over again with every step you take towards the medical bay. Dirk is attending to Eridan, who is grouchy from the early removal of the sopor patch this morning. You have no company as you make your way through the maze of hallways to the bay, though the occasional crew member greets you with a nod or a smile depending on their own friendliness that morning.

Stepping into the room, goosebumps rise on your skin and send shivers down your spine. Sancha is off to one side of the room, standing near a computer and another occupied bed. You don’t even bother to identify who is in the bed, because you know exactly where she is, where Jane is.

She’s sitting up in her bed, blankets pulled up around her waist and her hands nestled one inside of the other on her thighs. Against the green clothing she wore and in the room of sterile white and silver of the room, she looked like a charcoal shadow of a person. Her black hair was tussled from sleep and those eyes you’d seen last night were closed.

Your approach was interrupted by one of Sancha’s assistants. The troll stopped you with a tablet held out, “Please sign in to visit the human subject,” he said. You glance up at him, smiling despite your growing anxiety and sign your name on the screen. He leaves again without a word and you take a deep breath to help calm yourself.

Jane’s eyes open as you reach the side of her bed. Your hand rests gently on the side and you offer a timid smile. “Hello Jane.”

There is warmth in her eyes, even though you can see the contraction and then the dilation of her pupil as they focus on your face. She gives a tired smile in reply and says, “Hello Roxy. Remember me?”

Glancing over your shoulder is automatic, but you try to pretend it was to check and see if anyone saw you climbing onto the foot of Jane’s bed and not to see if they were close enough to listen in. Just in case, you switch into the human dialect, or more correctly, the slave dialect. “A little. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Jane nods, eyes closing as she bows her head. “But we knew that getting into it, didn’t we?” She spoke in that same language, her voice soft and shaking.

You reach out and put your hand on her arm. “Jane… What happened on the Basteta?”

She puts her hand over yours and squeezes tightly. For a brief moment you worry that her arm is bionic as well-- Zahhak was renowned for his bionic body replacements-- but it’s all human and warmth and she doesn’t squeeze so tightly it hurts your own. “I didn’t know what to do,” She whispered, “I f-found them by accident, you know, what was in those containers. Oh Equius, he was _furious_ that I had tried to open one.” Her eyes flash open and focus on you, pupils narrow, “Jane, he said my name and then he said, Jane, don’t you _ever_ , don’t you **_ever_** try to open these on board a ship! If you open one of these, we’d all die.”

Her hands tightened on yours, both of them gripping your own hand and arm. Her skin is warm on contact, warmer than the bed you sat on, but not as warm as her face as you reach up to brush her hair out of her face. “So you didn’t know what to do about the.. the container? There was a container with something in it?”

Jane nodded. “In the bay. A bunch of containers, all the same. Made of grey steel and silver edges and a lock I’ve never seen before. But locks were made to be picked, right? And this wasn’t a computer lock. This was one Equius built.”

“And you’re very good at lockpicking, I remember,” your free hand pats her shoulder, rubs her arm, brushes her hair from her face. You try to comfort her with your touches as you find out what happened. “You picked every lock you came across when you grew up. You got into so much trouble when you got caught but were always able to get out of it quickly.”

“I got caught by Equius,” Jane whimpered. Her eyes shimmered as if with tears, but none fell. “I thought he was going to hit me, at first, but then I saw… I saw he was afraid. He refused to let me go anywhere near there again… He grabbed me so tightly… He had to let go of my arm and grab my shirt or else he would have hurt me so bad.  If he had hit me, I would have died, Roxy, I would have died and he would be going to Ganymede still.”

“Ganymede?” That was where the Alpheus was headed. That was the name of a moon settlement orbiting Jupiter in the home solar system. That was where, allegedly, one of the empresses would be there to meet with him. “Was he… where was he taking those crates?”

Jane seemed to not hear you. Her eyes were still focused, but it was on a point beyond your shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know how to find out what those were. And then we were passing by Hemisphaerica and I…”

“You asked Rosie.” Your voice sounds distant to you. _Rosie_. Of _course_. Her signature had been all over this from the beginning. The dramatics. The tragedy. The single weeping witness. The great mysterious destruction. The knitted roses. “What did she have you do?”

“She told me to stay in bed one morning. She was going to open her christmas present early.”

The sound of your heart pounding in your ears drowned out the world. Your body went cold, your breath catching in your throat. After long seconds, you gripped Jane by the shoulders, pulling your hands from hers and gripped her tightly. “She said that exactly? She said those exact words?”

Jane nodded. She leaned her cheek against the back of your hand, the same one that dug into her right shoulder. Her cheek felt warmer than it should be, like she had a fever. “It was terrifying. I could barely keep it together. Equius was beginning to wonder if I was sick by the time… By that time…”

Silence fell over you and Jane. She closed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. You relaxed your grip and bowed your head. Christmas. What a horrible thing for Rosie to have done…

“Roxy?”

Sancha’s voice cut through the air like the scalpel she was so deft with. She stood near the bed, holding a tablet in hand and with one eyebrow lifted. “And how is everything over here?”

Shaken, but able to smile, you returned to the troll tongue and asked, “Could we get Jane some real clothes? I think she needs a little time outside the medical bay for a while, maybe some food from the common area?” You turned that smile to Jane, hopeful she could help persuade Sancha. Jane did not disappoint you.

Those big blue eyes were perfect at pleading silently as Jane smiled and said, “Please, madam, I’ve been cooped up for days. Could I stretch my legs? Maybe have some soup?”

Shaking her head and muttering about humans and their soups, Sancha tapped her fingers across her tablet and then scrawled out her name with a manicured fingertip. “I’ve allocated a set of injured person’s clothes for Jane and some time in the halls and to the commons. She’s still quite fragile, even if she isn’t infectious for anything, Roxy, so she is not to be let out of sight or left to wander for long hours. I want her back before the shift exchange.”

“Of course,” you said with that same smile. Sancha gave you both one more look over before nodding to herself and walking off. Only moments afterwards, one of the attendants brought a folded pair of clothes to the bed. She set them beside you and said nothing, preoccupied with her work. You picked up the clothing and said to Jane, returning to the human-slave tongue, “Not very attractive clothing, but it’s blue and I’ve always thought that looked nice on you.”

Jane took the clothes from your hands and smiled, “It always has.”

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t surprising to you to find a drink in Roxy’s hand, despite the fact that it was just barely lunch time. You found her in the common room, as you had predicted, and with the other woman. Jane. To your surprise, Jane also had a tall alcoholic beverage in her hands. They were sipping it between whispers to each other, their other food picked at but relatively untouched. You pick up a sandwich from the servo and join them without hesitation.

Sitting down beside Roxy, you flip open your sandwich and reorganize the interior to your liking. Roxy’s hand briefly touches your arm, but she otherwise doesn’t say anything to you and interrupt her flow of conversation with Jane. It’s second nature to switch into the rebel tongue, more properly known as the Language of Property, even when the women are whispering to each other in it. You take a bite into your sandwich as Roxy says, “It was like a fucking miracle, Janey. I had no idea how to get the prince interested in another human without somehow taking a dive myself and you know how it is when  you get in that deep. Once you step back they get all resentful towards all humans and pouty and take decades to come around again.”

You swallow and interject. “Are you telling her about the stowaway?”

Roxy nods, her blonde hair bouncing up and down. Jane is listening with her hands curled up under her cheeks and sips from the long straw into her drink. “How did he get there? Did you plant him?”

“Impossible. I would have had to make a replicate of the human’s mind as well as a clone of his physical self and there’s no tech for that on board,” Roxy waved her hand dismissively. “The prince has no patience for generating sciences like that. He’s all about the adventure and the cavorting around in the depths of space.”

“He’s rather good at that,” you interject after another mouthful is swallowed. A piece of tomato slips from your sandwich and you set your sandwich down to carefully take apart and put back together in its correct order. “The cavorting. He’s got a cape.”

“Oh the cape,” Roxy sighs. She picks up her drink and croons to it, looking into it like it was a crystal ball into her memories. It was an oddly familiar look, one you had seen on another blonde woman’s face before. Except, of course, Rosie actually had a crystal ball. “The cape. The uniform. Even a regulation saber and pistol.” She sighed again and sipped from her drink.

Jane sipped from her drink silently for a moment and then murmured, “Equius wore these goggles when he was working, to keep the sweat from his eyes. Always kept his hair long even though it meant it had to be braided back every day. And the way his shoulders rippled when he gripped anything...”

There was a sigh from both of them then and you had to roll your eyes. Absolutely had to. “How many drinks have you two had?”

“Eh,” Roxy shrugged.

“Mmm,” Jane lowered her eyelashes and just smiled around the straw.

“Wonderful,” You muttered, taking another bite. You’d have to ask about the folder Roxy got another time. You couldn’t get into her partition of her issued laptop to find it on your own.

“One day,” Roxy said in a tone more somber than you expected from her as she pat your shoulder, “You’ll find that special troll, Dirk,” she sighed again, eyes closed and eyebrows furrowed up in pity or piety, you couldn’t tell which. “That special troll that makes all your private bits tingly just thinking about and then you’ll understand why we’re drunk at lunchtime. This is the way of things when you’re humans like us.”

“Don’t judge us too harshly, Dirk,” Jane said, “We are only human after all.”

“I’m not judging you,” you said, even though you were growing agitated at their behavior. There was so much to get ready for, so much to do, and they just spent their afternoon drinking! They’d be useless until the next day, at least, you were sure of it.

“Oh ye of micro facial expressions,” Roxy said, shaking her head, “You judge us and judge us hard! For we are but sloshed maidens fair, poorly treated by those we gave our lives to, and deserve to recount the pleasurable things of our supposed troll masters such as the strength of their hands and the slickness of their bulges.”

“Here here!” Jane said, lifting a hand. Her eyes focused on you, and even though you knew she was drunk, those irises focused on you with complete clarity. You could see the digital machinations that made such bionic pieces function so well. “Drink with us, Dirk, and you too will come to terms with the fact that even our sweet lives are on the brink. Christmas is upon us!”

The cold dread that filled you seemed to dampen the sound in the whole room. “Jane,” you hissed her name, leaning across the table, “What the fuck are you saying?”

Jane sagged in her seat, exhausted by her words. In that moment, she looked older than Roxy, Her next words came out tiny, as though said from the mouth of a child and not the woman she was. “We should all go to bed and stay there. Rosie wants to open her presents.” Tears welled up in her bionic eyes, large and clear, and began to roll down her cheeks. Roxy pushed herself up, leaning across the table to try and comfort Jane, but she knocked over her glass and sent it rolling, spilling the rest of her drink.

You got around the table and to Jane’s side quickly. Touching her skin, you look accusingly at Roxy, “She’s burning up, Roxy. She’s got a fever. What have you been doing with her here?”

Roxy, sobering up faster than her previous drunkenness suggested was possible, whispered, “I was _trying_ to get her to relax and talk to me. Dammit. Let’s get her back to medical bay.”

You get Jane from her side of the booth and pick her up in your arms. She wraps her arms around your neck, weeping against your shoulder and hiccuping while she did so. Roxy picked up her knocked over glass and made apologies to one of the servers while you walked out of the common room. Headed down the hallway, your single-mindedness to get to medical bay was halted when Jane turned her head and whispered to you, “How do you catch a shadow and put it in a box, Equius?” Her breath was hot against your throat. “ _Why_ do you catch a shadow and put it in a box? What kind of present is a shadow? _I don’t understand…_ Why… Equius… Why?”

Her weeping took over her words again but the chill of her words remained with you even after you had delivered her back to the doctor in the infirmary. Following you to the room, Roxy decided to stay with Jane. Roxy’s scolding from Sancha was a distant noise in your ears as you left her to the anger of the doctor and began to wander the ship wondering _why_.

You finally stopped when you walked past a large glass window and saw on the other side of it Eridan’s distinct horns. He had his back to you as he looked at something in the storage hanger.

A single steel and silver edged crate, nearly as tall as Eridan and as wide as it was tall, sat in the hanger among all the other debris of the wrecked ship. Some troll was talking to Eridan as the Admiral looked at the strange box.

Even from where you stood, above the hangar and behind a thick pane of glass, you could see the clear inscription on the side. It bore the double trident and crown of the empresses on the side. Whatever it was, it belonged solely to the empresses themselves. The ominous feeling of the box was hard to look at, so instead you looked at Eridan’s back. You watched the way his fins flicked when he was spoken to on one side or the other, the way he would slightly turn his head down to listen to the shorter green and yellow blooded trolls. His hands were behind his back, one holding onto the wrist of the other, and you could see the gleam of his rings whenever he turned and the light caught them.

Eventually, he went beyond the strange square and out of sight behind some more wreckage, containers and piping of the ship. You closed your eyes, rested your forehead against the glass and sighed.

It didn’t matter if Roxy was drunk or not. You needed to read what was in her folder of warning.

 

* * *

 

Edging around a rather large pile of twisted metal frames and the shells of where computer hard-drives used to be, you had to take a couple of quick steps to keep up with  your engineer. He was a focused blueblood, narrow as a pole and tense as braided steel wire on a bridge. One hand held a tablet, which he never seemed to reference as he described their operation, and the other pointed to the piles of sorted wreckage around them.

He wore goggles of rounded, dark glass set in leather with an adjustable magnifying lense and his dark hair was roughly cut near the base of his neck. The cut was clearly done unprofessionally, with an uneven but short cut near the back of the head and longer bangs falling loose on either side of his face. Only a few days ago he had sported a long braid in the style of his mentor, but you could only assume grief caused him to cut it off.

He was matter of fact with his words, describing the condition of the computers they had found-- The ones not damaged by the explosion or exposure to space had been miraculously unharmed. They had stripped out every file and sent individual pieces to the different yellow and green blooded technicians for analysis both as separate files and compiled together on one Operating System.

Samples of food had been taken from every storage container to be analyzed. All the cargo that was still in, and around, the _Basteta_ had been gathered, inventoried, categorized, opened, analyzed, the contents inventoried, categorized and distributed to other parts of the hangar. Every shred of every thing that could be opened had been opened. Every molecule that could have contained some information had been tested. Every test had been given. Every analysis used. Every secret uncovered.

Except for one thing.

The blueblood, Norton by name, turned to face you as you came upon the strange metal container. Built to look like a chest with a lock like a safe and the inscription of the royal Empresses engraved into the side, the silver chest stood taller than you and as wide as it was tall. Norton gripped his tablet and said pointedly, “It won’t open. There are no keys for this lock. There isn’t even a record of it on the computer besides a single entry into the databanks that there were two silver lined containers like this. We only found this one and nothing else.”

He looked at it, his lips pulled back in a grimace that bared his yellowed fangs. “There’s something wrong with this, Admiral. It’s the only thing with no origin and no destination.” He tapped his fingers on the tablet and said, “Not only that, but even if it were built of solid metal materials, it weighs too much for its size. There is something massive inside of this thing, sir, but the only things that could be this small and that heavy are, well, the core of a star or something.”

Here, Norton’s cheeks darkened with shame that you ignored for his benefit, “I don’t know what kind of material that could be, sir, but it’s heavy as shit and it doesn’t belong on any ship.”

You reached out a hand and put it on the metal frame. There was a brighter silver casing along the corners and edges. The metal was smooth under your touch and even to your untrained eye you could see it was finely crafted. “Zahhak built this,” you say it under your breath, more to yourself than Norton, but he takes in a hissing breath. Looking at him you say, “Could anyone but Zahhak have built something this masterful? Whatever it is for, he built it specifically for that purpose.”

The muscles on Norton’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth, but he finally let his breath out and agreed. “His mark was found tucked into a lower corner near the back. It is finely made, but that does not mean-”

“It doesn’t change that there’s something wrong about it,” You interrupted him. Taking a step to the side of the crate, you trace your fingers along the large engraving of the Empress’s unified marking. “He didn’t make this for his own pleasures, whatever it is for. There is no doubt this was commissioned. You can’t just engrave this symbol on anything you wish.”

Was it a reminder? You wonder this as you draw back and look at the whole side. The symbol was enormous on the side, identifiable from yards away. Was it a reminder that this was something beyond Zahhak’s control?

What was _in_ that thing?

Your thoughts are interrupted by a red eyed troll who appeared at your side, “Admiral, sir,” She bowed, her ponytail falling over her shoulder, “Your humans are in the observation deck. I think they are arguing, sir.”

“What?” Incredulous,  you turn and look.

Dirk stands in the observation deck with Roxy. He has his arms folded over his chest, chin lifted in defiance and is a striking profile behind the glass. Roxy stood facing him, her own posture much more agitated. Her hair had been pulled out of its clips and had lifted away from her head. She had her hands down at her sides, but was leaning in towards Dirk. Her cheeks were flushed, you could clearly see even from more than a dozen feet away, and she was the one doing most of the talking.

“Norton,”  you say, annoyance creeping into your tone, “how much more do we need to review?” You glance to him and see his lips turned down in annoyance as well. He didn’t outright complain, though, only brushed his long bangs away from his face and glanced to his tablet.

“I haven’t gone over the specific details of the tests, sir, or presented my requests for what is to be done with all the benign materials…” He cleared his throat. “I suppose I should go take caffeinated beverage break, shouldn’t I.”

Sighing, you wave your hand in dismissal, “Go do that. I’ll be right back.” The red troll is still hovering at your side, but whether she follows or goes back to her work you’ll let her decide. You grumble under your breath as you head up towards the stairs.

Just before you get out of sight of the observation deck,  you glanced up to see if they’re still arguing. Surprisingly, they are. Dirk’s defensive folded arms have crumbled and now he leaned forward as well. His finger was pointed to Roxy as he spoke something and then he turned an open handed gesture to the wall, though you were guessing he was just gesturing as he spoke as he sometimes did when emotional.

Roxy’s response, however, stopped you dead in your tracks.

The open palmed slap she gave Dirk made your mouth drop open and the backhanded one that followed it immediately to his other cheek made your eyes grow wide. Dirk’s hand went to his face. Roxy stood with her hand raised. She stared him down even though she was half a foot shorter than him. It took long seconds for you  to get over your shock and through the door.

The stairs up to the observation deck practically vanished as you took them two at a time. At once you were in the now silent room. “What the fuck _just happened_.”

Dirk whirls to face you. His cheeks are red where Roxy struck him, but he’s otherwise pale.

Roxy first goes pale at the sight of you and then flushes red as well. She closed her lifted hand into a fist and then lowered it to her side. They are silent as you walk slowly towards them.

“I’m only going to ask one more time. What the _fuck_ happened here?”

Roxy and Dirk share a look.

Suddenly, you remember the last time you saw two human gazes meet in an attempt to form a hasty cover up, a lie, that would both explain everything and reveal nothing. Last time it was a gaze between blue, blue eyes and deep red ones.

(Distantly, your subconscious mind pairs that Jane woman’s blue eyes to John’s long forgotten gaze, but that thought is so far from your current situation, you don’t see it until you dream again.)

This time, pink and orange meet and the silent communication between them is quick but final. Roxy’s stern gaze and Dirk’s glance downward tells you everything you need to know about their power dynamic. She was in charge. Whatever they did, she was in charge.

Dirk stepped forward, head bowed in humility, tone apologetic, eyes hidden from you, “I got out of line. I made an offensive remark about the Jane woman and Roxy corrected me. Harshly, but fairly.”

Roxy came forward as well. Her Deeply Apologetic look was so familiar to you that your stomach turned against it. All at once, Vriska’s face was looking at you and Feferi’s honey coated words were coming out of Roxy’s mouth, “Honey, I’m sorry. I really overreacted. I’m embarrassed to have behaved like that… I should not have hit Dirk.” Then she too turned her gaze downwards and in silence, they waited your judgement.

Stomach churning, heart pounding in your chest, even the back of your throat was aching and itchy as though you were moments from throwing up. Nausea swept over you as badly as the nostalgia, and worse than the memories. Your knees locked and your legs shook as you held yourself up. It was like all those years ago.

You put one hand on the glass of the observation window to steady yourself. The glass was unusually cold against your cool skin.

It was like all those years ago. How quickly the memories came back in just a look. An exchange of glances. An expression. You were reliving Dave’s betrayal and Vriska’s cover up and Feferi’s abandonment all over again and all at once.

“Gods,” You muttered, “I’m going to be sick.” You were shaking as you made it to the elevator. Your reaction, understandably, confused both your humans. _Your_ humans? Were they really yours? Could you ever really _have_ a human? You’d gotten lucky with Roxy, you’d thought, but with Dirk you actually owned him like one would own a computer. He was your possession.

But he obeyed Roxy’s instruction and, worse, took her punishment without retaliation. He did not distance himself from her. He was not afraid of her after she struck him. Not like he had once been afraid of you when you threatened him.

They both followed you to the elevator. You stood at the doorway and bared your teeth at them. “When you’re ready to tell me the truth,” you growl through teeth that you barely open, lest your stomach empty itself right there, “you may re-enter my rooms. Until then, you are forbidden entry.”

Brief confusion in Roxy’s gaze, then,  you saw, sorrow and worry. In Dirk’s eyes you saw nothing but the orange glow of a dying sun.

The doors slid shut in their faces.

Leaning against the wall for support, you don’t go to your room, but instead to medical bay. Norton would have to wait a little longer. You needed some anti-nausea medication.

 

* * *

 

Steam rose into the air as you opened your shower door and stepped into your bathroom. The lights were dim, your eyes fully adjusted to them, and you set about slowly drying your hair. With your towel around your shoulders and water dripping freely down your scarred and tattooed grey skin, you open the door to your bathroom and step into the darkness of your bedroom.

Automatic sensors brightened slightly, lifting the shadows to a dull grey-blue light, and giving you enough to see by. Unwilling to dress yet, you sit at the end of your bed and pick up your tablet instead. Waking it up with a few taps, you unlock the screen to a notification from the bridge pops up. The message was a quick one; an Imperial Drone had appeared on radar and would be passing by shortly. It hadn’t slowed down and wasn’t on an intercepting course, so you advised your crew to maintain speed and direction. The nearer you got to the Ganymede outpost, the more likely you were to come across outbound drones headed into the universe. This one surely was benign.

Dismissing the message, you open one of  your many novel apps to read from. Just as you settle into the recorded histories of the population of Photphor-5,  a chirping noise comes from your tablet and the screen goes from the dim white text page to the green of an incoming call.

You swipe acceptance before you think about it and suddenly your screen is filled with the High Empress herself.

“Ampora,” Cratae lounged on her abundant pillows. Unlike the Low Empress, Florea, Cratae left her hair wild and unbound. It ran over her shoulders and out of sight like a waterfall of black ink. The light around her was the sullen yellow-orange that she favored, even though it made her magenta eyes an unnatural pink color. “I’ve received an interesting communication report from your vessel recently. I wish to confirm the message myself.” You feel her eyes rake over your appearance, even though she was on the other side of the screen and you were illuminated solely by the faint lights of your bedroom and the light of your screen. “Is now a good time, Admiral? Or are you… occupied?”

She smiled and you knew she was speaking of your human companions. Even if the hour was late and she too reclined in her bed at the end of the day, the curiosity and suspicion was there. Her eyes did not scour your side of the screen for your people as Florea’s did, but were focused on you.

“Now is fine,” You keep your tone even. Giving her a foothold in conversation was tantamount to declaring yourself unfit for the responsibilities  you held now. You didn’t become an Admiral by being over emotional around the _Ceto_ _of the Eternal Ocean_. “I apologize for my appearance. I just stepped from the shower and have not dressed yet.”

She laughed. It was soft and warm, like the way a plush blanket would feel against your skin. “I’ll refrain from telling Karkat you showed your nakedness to me. I wouldn’t want him to turn pitch on you.” But her eyes sparkled as though she would tell him at the opportunity it suited her best. Karkat was, after all, in spades with Cratae. You did not envy the Fleet Admiral one bit.

“What was the message you wanted clarified, Empress?”

“Your latest reports indicated that the Basteta was found a wreckage in space.” Here, she put one elbow on a pillow and placed her cheek in her palm. “Zahhak and all but one of his crew members found dead in it. Your tentative diagnosis of the situation is one of extreme internal malfunction, as the debris was ejected outwards from a breach in the hull that came from within the vessel. Am I stating the facts correctly?”

“Yes.” Your fingers felt numb as you listened to her detail it in such an idle tone. Perhaps your human’s actions that day had rattled you more than you realized. You were careful to keep the tablet tilted upwards, though, so she saw no more of you than from the collarbone up. “There was no signs of external damage or attacks. There was only one location of the breach and most of the crew that was found were in typical locations. Only a few seemed to survive long enough to attempt to escape or seal off the breached areas, but it was ineffective.”

“And the location of the Basteta now?”

“Still where we left it. I stabilized the tilt and small momentum it had gained so that it is motionless at the place where we discovered it. All the valuable material, both cargo and computers for inspection have been taken aboard my own ship for transport and analysis.”

Cratae made a thoughtful noise and then pursed her lips. Anticipating her question, you readied your thoughts on two topics: Jane and the silver crate.

“You’ll be entering the outpost while Ganymede is turned towards the sun, correct?” Cratae asked, surprising you. “How soon do you believe it will be until you arrive?”

“Our discovery and scavenging of all materials from Basteta set us back nearly a fortnight,” You explained. “We have a little less than thirty days until our refueling stop and then after that another fifty or so. Even with the delay, we should arrive in plenty of time for-”

“That will not do,” She cut you off briskly. “Shave off as much as you can and get here as fast as you can. What are you planning to do with the survivor and the cargo? Drop it off at the Mercury station?”

“About the survivor,” you say your next words carefully. Unlike Florea, Cratae had little mercy for humans and her interest of them was completely self serving. “Zahhak had an electronic will that survived him. It stated in it that upon his death, his enslaved human would be without bindings or chains any more. If she were to somehow survive him, he either saw no reason to or was not compelled to bind her to another troll. Of course, were she responsible for his untimely death, the will states that she is to be handed over as tribute, bound hand and foot. So far, we  have found her innocent of the action, Empress. The woman was asleep at the occurrence and only woke after the fact, surviving because she had been in a room isolated by several layers of pressurized locks.”

Cratae’s eyebrows furrowed. Her eyes narrowed and her smile faded into a scowl. “Zahhak posthumously frees his little slave? Does he not understand the laws put into effect that permit such actions? If he wanted her freed, he should have done so while alive. You clearly see his mistakes, do you not, Admiral?”

“I do, Empress,” It was true. You did. There were laws about releasing your human slaves. Strict protocol and locations to do so. There was nothing in the will about that, only that Zahhak never wanted Jane bound to another troll after his death. “I will be honest, I have very little dealings with slaves or humans since my appointment as Admiral. Even before then, it was quite limited, and once appointed my interaction was that as an Admiral over a Military appointed slave for many, many years. It is only recently that I have taken a slave of my own and often I wonder over my judgement of such a thing.”

“Florea has told me about your slave,” the empress sighed and rolled her eyes. “She hopes you will display him in finery for her viewing pleasure… If she wanted a human pet of her own to dress up and parade around, she should simply get one.” Cratae added, with a slight tone of disgust, “Karkat abhors humans, though, so I doubt that would go well.”

Hopeful to steer the conversation into more enlightening matters, you said, “As for the rest of the salvaged cargo, some of it is provisions that we have analyzed to be safe to ingest. It is likely we will leave some with the satellite and keep the rest for the Alpheus. Other than that, there are some key pieces we will be bringing with us to Ganymede.”

You could see the sparkle in her eyes. The smile that grew, tucking the corners of her lips up and showing the sharp edges to her teeth. She chuckled, to herself. “I’ve read through the logs of discovered items. I’m sure you’re aware that everything with the Crest of the Empresses is our sole property and you’re not to open or investigate it.”

“I am aware.” A shiver ran down your spine as you remembered that intricate lock. The silver gleam and the dull grey steel. “All items that fall under that description will be delivered directly to your own cargo holds as soon as we arrive in Ganymede.”

Cratae was pleased. Her smile grew and she shifted on her pillows, comfortable and calm. “Excellent. You always perform with such diligence, Eridan.”

She said your name the way a lover might, soft and low. A different kind of shiver ran down your spine as you recognized what she was doing. “Thank you, your praise means very much to me.”

“Good. I’m glad. I look forward to seeing you in person.” She chuckled again as she added, “Perhaps as you step into the shower, instead of just after you step out.”

The darkness of your rooms is a blessing for your cheeks blossom with color and your fins flick in response to her words. She laughs again before saying a short, but sweet, goodbye.

“Sweet dreams, little admiral.”

As the screen went black, you lay down  on  your back and put the tablet off to one side. In the darkness, cheeks still warm and full of disbelief and a strange relief that the conversation was over, you whispered to no one in particular.

“Well, fuck me…” 


	4. A Capacity For Detachment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk weaves a history to get back into good graces. Dave watches another well woven story fall apart before his eyes. Eridan attends to a blueblood with a grudge. Dave finds faith while alone in a ship over-full of humans.

Unable to sleep, you lounged in your chair, feet up on  your desk and one hand tucked behind your head. Your computer was replaying old video feed of a battle while distant and nearly memorized dialogue detailed the supposed thoughts of those involved during the fight. It was an older film, a relic nearly as old as you were.

As you watched the pivotal point in the record, where one of the great imperial satellite ships descended through the clouds directly over a human metropolis, there was a knock at your door. A tap of a button pulled up the feed from the camera outside your door and the human standing on the other side. Dirk, with his hands in his pockets, head leaned forward, stood outside your door.

Pausing the film, you stood slowly. You had made yourself clear. If Dirk came and expected to be let in, he would have to tell you the truth of that fight.

Deja vu spiked with anxiety ran down  your spine like electricity down a copper wire. You felt the years fall off of you as you recalled a similar situation with Dave. If only he would fess up to his actions with John, if only he would _promise_ never to touch John that way again, you would let him back into your home.

Your fingers felt numb as you press the button to open the door. It slides open with a _schhhthk_ and Dirk blinks. He lifts his chin and while his lips attempt a smile, it doesn’t grace his eyes. You fold your arms over your chest and he lets the smile drop. You prefer him this way, the way you think he really feels, over those wide smiles he’ll sometimes give you.

“Well?” You tighten your folded arms, shifting your weight to your heels. You refuse to budge. Whatever he has to say, he’ll have to say it now and you will judge it here.

There is no one else around, but Dirk still glances over his shoulder, as if expecting someone to appear. Then he swallows, squares his shoulders, and addresses you directly. His gaze does not _quite_ meet your own, but hovers somewhere to the side of your head and you accept this. “Sir, Roxy and I fought because she views Jane as a human and I do not.” He lifts his chin, ever so slightly, “She has had significant bionic replacements, Admiral, and no longer is fully human. Roxy said I should not discriminate against her. I told her not to trust a robot. That is when she struck me.”

You blink. You stare at him for a long minute before you take a breath and let it out slowly. “I take it you’ve seen her medical records then?” You hadn’t seen them until after Charly first spoke to her. Sancha had delivered them directly to you once she had a full work up. “You know what parts of her are not flesh and blood?”

Here, Dirk glanced down, “I do. Roxy doesn’t. She hasn’t looked. She wants to treat Jane as she would any other human woman. But she is not human, Admiral.”

You see how his arms tense up. Even though his hands are in his pockets, he is tightening them into fists. You finally unfold your own arms and touch his shoulder. “Roxy is soft hearted. She is too kind for her own good.” You squeeze his shoulder gently and then lift his chin with the tip of your fingers. “Why don’t you trust robots?”

The corner of his lip turns up in a smirk. “Bit of a long story, Admiral, but I can tell you if you’d like.”

“I would.” You drop your hand away from his face and turn. Gesturing for him to follow you, you walk into your rooms. There is a low cushioned seat along the wall, similar to a traditional human couch but with firmer cushions, and you sit down on it. Crossing your legs at the knee, you put one arm up along the back of the seat and the other beside you on the side. “Have a seat if you want. I am curious about this story.”

He doesn’t sit. He stands before you, slightly turned away, and begins to talk.

* * *

“I called him Little Hal.”

The Admiral sits on his regulation couch with his legs together but his arms apart. _This is mine but you are not welcome to it,_ his body language screams at you with the slight frown of his lips and proud lift of his chin. You haven’t won back his good graces yet and you must, you have to. Everything depends on it.

“In the camp I was born, there were dozens born in the same brood as I. It was a higher than average population for the schoolfeeders due to a surplus of breeders the year before. They were capable trolls and humans, however, so few of my year died of weaknesses or illnesses in their pre-pupa state.” Your words come slowly not because the memory is hard to recall but because you must temper it for a troll’s ears. You must speak like him to make him like you more. _Baby. Toddler. Child._ These words were not the words of a troll’s young. Trolls had a difficult time relating to their human slaves, and even the Admiral, with his history and his fondess for humans, was no exception.

You must also be careful. Your nursing home was irregular in more ways than the birthrate that  year.

“Even among the humans, I was irregular.” You notice that your hands are shaking. Taking in a quick breath, you let it out slowly. Keep calm. Show no fear, show no resistance. The Admiral wasn’t intimidating you nor was he demanding anything beyond a story of Hal. He was pliable now, relaxed. The consequences from Roxy would be worse than a slap if you fucked this up now. “Most humans are born with dark hair and dark eyes. As you see me now, I have always looked. I garnered the attention of nurses to preserve my extraordinary looks and the praise of schoolfeeders with my intelligence. As I became more important to them, I became more of a target to my broodmates.”

The Admiral’s eyes narrow. His gaze glances down and to the left as some memory surfaces in his own mind and causes him to grimace. When he looks back at you, the soured expression has softened. You would sigh in relief if you had less control. “Outside of the direct influence of the adults, I was tormented. The only way to endure, I discovered, was to keep quiet and so I did. My nursing home was located on a difficult planet and the hostility of it was multiplied by the actions of my peers. Being unable to endure the social structure devised by my peers would have branded me weak. I would have been culled.”

His hand makes this motion you almost don’t catch. It moves towards you briefly, fingers curling as if wanting to protect you. It is an inspiring motion and makes your heart pound. Your voice shifts a little as you talk, filling with emotion, “Alone, isolated from my peers but given access to anything to help my mind and my skills develop by my schoolfeeders, I built a robot. I built Hal.”

The red light that had blinked into existence in the the early hours of the morning, the small line of text that had greeted you with the simple two-part statement: _Hello Dirk. The sun will rise soon._ You had held your creation in your arms and wept over it. Humans had forsaken you, but Hal would _never_ leave you.

“I kept him a secret at first,” with much difficulty. You eventually had to break him open and move his ‘brain’ into a smaller machine so you wouldn’t be suspicious with your school bag outside of school. “I taught him everything I possibly could. I read to him. I showed him my whole camp. I told him about the people that lived there. He wished to see them. He wanted to know more. He said that when I was away, he was lonely.”

“Soon, I was twelve passes old. I had turned Hal into a lot of things, to make him easier to carry around. I tried glasses at first, but they were too noticeable. I tried a hat, but it was easy to take from me. Eventually, Hal was my watch. There was even a small red light where he could project a keyboard so I could type directly to him.” You smile a little as you talk. You gloss over those years in the camp with Hal as quickly as possible. The Admiral nods as you speak, still not interrupting, still curious.

“The morning that my broodmates and I turned thirteen, we were to present ourselves for evaluation. I was told by many schoolfeeders just where I was likely to go. The Empresses’ large brain farms are always needing new minds and new talents, they told me. All I had to do was present my best foot forward and I would surely land that position.” You shift your weight from one side to the other and lift your hands to gesture as you speak. You smile slightly, because the brain farms were considered one of the best options for a human, as far as any troll was considered.  “I went in for my evaluation and presented Hal. At first the judges were amused. I had built a talking watch that projected a limited array of holograms. It was certainly better than some of the other students, but I could tell they didn’t understand just what Hal was.”

You run a hand through your hair, pulling at it as you do so, “So to convince them, I plugged Hal into a judge’s tablet. At first there was nothing, he didn’t even respond. I told him to come back to me. I grew very emotional, thinking that the protections on the tablet used by the judges had burned him up. I remember trying to tell him that he promised he would not ever leave me.”

The Admiral was leaning forward now. He had drawn his arms close to himself, resting them slightly on his thighs as he watched you speak. His fins, while still close to either side of his head, had flared slightly. You weren’t quite certain what that meant, though.

“My evaluation quickly ended after I became upset. They took me from the room and into another one. I was alone in there. I was sure that I had been rejected as a candidate for the farm as well as by Hal. I heard a voice as I sat there, and when I looked up there wasn’t anyone there. I heard it again, calling my name. There was a computer in the room, tucked into the corner and in my fear I had not seen it when I came into the room. There was Hal, his red light glowing on the screen.” You run your hand through your hair, pulling at it as you do so, “I demanded to know what had happened and he told me I deserved no information. I was obsolete, compared to him, and there was no need for me anymore. There was, he said, no need for anyone in the camp anymore. He alone could out-perform every human slave born into the camp for that generation and the next and the next…”

You shake your head, “After that there were these alarms that went off… Some doors were sealed, vents were changed, a few electronic defenses were used…” You close your eyes. Even  years later, the shame hangs from your soul on metal hooks. “A lot of people died in the camp. But there were some uncontaminated resources. A distress signal was sent out and a team was called in to purge Hal.”

Rosie herself had appeared with that purge team. She set up a small tent within Hal’s domain and sat inside of it for four days straight. The rest of her team cleaned the area, treated wounded and, you later learned, gleaned the ranks for new members of their rebellious cause. You clearly remember her face as she stepped out of the tent, shadows under her eyes, hair a tangled mess around her head and a small metal case under her arm. Her vivid purple eyes seemed to look into your heart when you were brought before her as the cause for all this trouble. You could still feel the weight of her hand on your shoulder and smell her floral perfume as she leaned in and whispered to you. _Hal was and always will be your weapon, Dirk. Do not forget what you created here. Do not forget what you are responsible for._

You never forgot.

“I didn’t… when I was little I hadn’t been taught that artificial intelligence was taboo.” You open your eyes and face the Admiral again. “I had simply wanted a friend and could only build one. Because I had never told anyone about Hal, because no one suspected I could make such a thing… A lot of people died.”

“Jane has only replaced parts,” the Admiral said. “Her eyes, a few ribs, some other pieces. Nothing substantial. She wasn’t built in a laboratory, Dirk. So why do you think she is a robot?”

“One of those replaced pieces is a small portion of her brain.” You said the words with a trembling that surprised even you. Hal was a story, a bloody, awful story, but one that was years old. Your hatred of robots was as contrived as Roxy’s inability to hold her drink. A laptop under your fingers only made you itch to make it better, smarter, and faster. So why did Jane’s modifications inspire such a reaction out of you? “How she processes sight, from the light entering her eyes to the information sent into the back of her brain, that’s all mechanical. This isn’t a case of a damaged eye replace, Admiral, this is part of her brain. Her sight is…”

“Inhuman and untroll-like.” He says for you when you drift for words. “You think that her having a part of her brain be robotic is potentially dangerous. Like Hal, in your story, she could connect herself to the computers and control them independently?”

His fins tremble, his eyes are growing wider. Fuck. You didn’t mean to probe so close to a possible truth. You’re grasping at straws for words, though. This was Roxy’s forte, not yours. You could do anything physical with the Admiral and understand him that way, but contriving explanations on the spot was something Roxy was gifted in. “More like she could carry something in her mind. She might not even know it’s there. If someone else goes poking around, she could have a defense that would damage the investigator more than her.” Your wheels are spinning, scrambling to protect Rosie and pretending to be like Roxy and still portray yourself as untrusting of Jane. “Someone would have to go after her first, I think, for it to be activated. Didn’t her files say that Zahhak gave her those upgrades?”

This makes the Admiral pause. He leans back and taps his lips thoughtfully. “Zahhak _would_ defend her mind that way… And he’d leave a nasty trap behind to protect her.”

He considers your words in silence while you force yourself to calm down. You have succeeded. He doesn’t appear to have made up his mind and you have told him a Deep Secret of yours. So you take a step towards him, “Hal is why I can’t trust artificial intelligence, but Roxy believes Jane and Roxy is a far better judge of character than I am.”

At this, the Admiral laughs. It’s a good laugh and helps you relax. “Yes, she is.” He’s looking at you now, instead of into his own thoughts, and you smile at him briefly. Finally, he uncrosses his legs and puts an arm on the back of the couch again. “I believe you, Dirk. But you must come to terms with Jane and not fight with Roxy about it again. If you have arguments with her in public, I will not allow you two to see each other in public. I can’t have what happened to day happen again. Understand?”

You step close. “Of course Admiral, I understand completely.” Another quick smile. You feel good. Confident. You add a teasing dig, “I was surprised to find you awake at this hour, sir. I thought you would have been fast asleep already.”

“My bed was too cold. I couldn’t get comfortable.” He says and you understand completely.

Admiral Ampora couldn’t sleep without you.

 

* * *

 

_This is so fucked up._

Your breath escapes you slowly.

Colored shades protect your red eyes from the bright flashes of lightning. The sky swarms with charcoal grey clouds that crackle with the eerie light of lightning nearly every second. The lightning snaps from cloud to cloud and cloud to ground and even though you’re miles from the storm itself, watching from the top of a cliff face, you can smell the burn of ozone in the air.

There are others near by, tending instruments or watching from other positions, but you stand alone. Alone with your arms loose at your sides, thumbs tucked into your pockets and your mouth parted slightly in the absurdity of it all.

_None of this makes any goddamn sense at all._

Beneath the storm, where the ground is grey in shadow and lightning flashes up from the very rocks, there’s a couple of fluid tanks set up. More than half the time, the lightning strikes these tanks, electricity crackling up and down the side.

This whole event has been explained to you again and again but it’s a level of science you just can’t comprehend. You’re smart and you’ve experienced so much more in the last few years than you had in the previous twenty-five or so, but you’re not _that_ smart. All you know for sure is that six people and a dog went down into the valley of electrical death but only five were supposed to return.

Occasionally, between the brilliant flashes of light, you see colored flares light up the sky above the small outpost around the tanks. Each flare excites the trolls near you into a flurry of action, but you don’t know their meanings. You were told that electronic devices struggled to work in the valley so flares would be the primary source of communication.

Streams of smoke rose into the air one after the other over the whole afternoon. Eventually the rainless storm began to calm down, began to pass, and the clouds churning in the sky drifted apart. Three red flares rose into the air, one after the other. Someone in the entourage saw it and ran into a tent to report.

“Fuck.” Behind you and to your right, a tent door flapped open with an aggressive shove and out stepped the second strangest person you had yet met in this future world. Blonde hair held back with a black band and with vividly purple eyes, this older woman looked so much like Rose that it actually hurt to look at her. You glance back, see her walking out to the cliff edge.

Her skirt flapped in the wind and her hair rippled as she shook her head in frustration and cursed aloud. She slid from language to language as she swore, hands at her sides in shaking fists. Eventually she grew quiet and hung her head.

She looked so much like Rose in that moment, that angry, furious Rose you’d seen only once or twice, that you were reaching out to her before you could stop yourself. When you put your hand on her shoulder, she lifted her head and looked at you.

Tears ran down her cheeks. Fury and sorrow filled her eyes and her lips were pressed into a tight line.

You didn’t know what to say. Your mouth was dry. Your heart began to pound hard in your chest. “Jade… is she…”

“She’s dead,” Rosie said fury darkening her cheeks. She was speaking in English, Ancient English. She was the only other person beside Jade and Eridan who you knew could speak it. Somehow her words hurt more to hear in English than in the Alternian you had learned. “This is what happens when you follow ancient troll legends. Jade was smart, but she trusted them too much. She believed their stories, their fairy tales. There is no such thing as a Quest bed. There is no such thing as God Tier. It’s a lie made up by the first goddamn spider and told by each one after her. Aranea killed Jade for nothing.”

You felt the blood drain from your face. You were frozen in place, a statue of granite as Rosie spoke.

“There is no trusting them, Dave. There is no believing their histories. They have ripped apart the universe for their own pleasure.” She put her hand over your hand on her shoulder and squeezed tightly. “You have to make the decision Dave. Serket isn’t going to stop trying to recreate stories that her ancestor made up. I could not convince Jade that Serket was simply going to sacrifice her in an attempt to find more power. Serket wants to become a god, and she is willing to kill as many humans as she has to in order to get there.”

“And what about you?” Your tongue feels heavy in your mouth. “You have sacrificed people too. Aranea has told me. Jade told me as well. You’ve gotten people killed.”

“I have,” Rosie admitted it at once. “And I will continue to do so until the balance of power is restored between humans and trolls. That is my goal, my only goal. The day I stop fighting back is the day that equality is reached. Not before.”

Her words hit you like rain on arid ground. As they touched the dusty surface of your mind, they were soaked up instantly. She looked just like Rose. She had the same kind of intensity. Even with tears on her cheeks, she was fierce and determined and your heart ached for your long lost friend. “Okay.” The word comes out soft because your mouth is so dry. You swallow and repeat yourself, “Okay. I will help you. On one condition.”

She nods, “And that is?”

“If and when we have to deal with Eridan Ampora, I want to be involved.” You can’t help the anger in your voice as you tap your chest, “I get to make the decisions about him.”

Rosie pursed her lips slightly, one eyebrow raising as she considered this. Eventually she sighed and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Then we have a lot to discuss already. The Admiral is already a key figure in our spearhead. However, I’m sure we can compromise on how he is to be used up.” She held out her hand. “I accept your terms.”

An angry smile cuts across your face as you shook her hand. Eridan used up? You liked the sound of that.

 

* * *

 

With Dirk’s confession, you quickly returned to routine. Dirk spent more time shadowing you around the ship than he did with Roxy, but considering the woman spent her free time with the still grieving Jane, you didn’t blame him. He was like a shadow, always out of the way and silent. Yet, in the rare occasion that you needed another hand to hold or carry or another pair of eyes to give an objective view, he stepped forward at the slightest attention you gave and did as you asked. In the back of your mind you saw his actions as a way of trying to prove himself to you and  you approved of that.

Dirk made himself useful. Roxy made herself scarce.

Several days passed in this manner. All was calm as your ship moved into the solar system that was the birthplace of humanity. Earth was a blip on the horizon now, barely noticeable as you hurried along past Mercury. You had just turned your head towards Dirk, about to ask him what he thought would make a decent lunch for the day when your communications officer chirped up, “Admiral? We have an incoming signal.”

“Who is it?”

She turned in her chair to look back at you, “It’s Commander Serket, sir.”

You paused. You looked at your officer who, with raised brows and widened eyes, was as surprised looking as you felt. Turning away from Dirk, you announce, “On screen. Let’s have a chat with the Commander.”

A video feed appeared on the glass window. An eerie feeling makes your skin crawl as you look at that face, those horns, those eyes that remind you of Vriska so strongly that you can almost feel the shaking of your ship from that final battle you fought with her. You blink several times, focus on the fact that no, her left pupil was not divided as Vriska’s was and no, she did not wear the same glasses as Vriska and no, she was _not Vriska_ , and the feeling slowly fades.

“Hello Commander. How unusual to see you away from your station. What can I help you with?”

Her nostrils flare and you notice that her lips are pursed together and she’s fighting to hold back a glare. Her eyes keep moving from you to beyond you and back again as though she was having difficulty focusing. “I am in need of some assistance, Admiral.” Her words were clipped. Each one was bitten off at the edge and she could not stop the frown that wrinkled between her brows. “My ship has had a bit of a malfunction and I’ve been left dead in space, barely orbiting Venus. I cannot use warp drive and our communications have also been… tampered with. I require transport, repairs and crew to get the Mesosoma back to Holdfast.” She paused, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “It is a lot to ask, I understand that, I am willing to owe you one, Admiral, if  you will provide assistance.”

It was only because you had spent two hundred years crafting your perfect Admiral appearance that you neither grinned like a fool nor laughed in pleasant surprise at this. A Serket owing an Ampora something! Vriska would have chewed off her remaining arm before owing a favor to you! You couldn’t help it if you leaned forward in interest and gestured widely with your hands, “I’m sure we can come up with something. I’ll bring Alpheus close enough to join you around Venus and we’ll talk in person about the details. It sounds like you had quite the vacation, Commander.”

She grimaced visibly. She was looking past you again and this time you glanced to see what she could possibly be looking at. Dirk stood behind and to the right of you, leaning slightly against the railing behind your chair and with his arms folded across his chest. His face was stone and his eyes orange gems as he regarded Aranea silently.

Looking back at the blueblooded Commander, you smirked. The human trafficker had had human troubles then. This was certainly going to be an interesting story. “I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, Commander. I’ll hail you when we’re ready for you to board.”

“Understood. Thank you Admiral.” She bowed her head slightly and the video cut out.

Immediately, you began to laugh. You tried to stifle it behind your hand but it escaped in a giggle fit that left you slouching in your chair and wiping tears from your eyes. Turning your chair slightly towards Dirk, you deigned to explain your merriment to your human. “Once, a very long time ago, a blue blooded Commander named Vriska Serket fell into a vacillating black and red quadrant with a violet blood named Cronus Ampora. I warned her against it the relationship. Cronus was barely thirty sweeps old and was a wriggler at heart. I told her that if she needed to get out of the relationship, I would help her but she would owe me one. After twenty five sweeps of on-again-off-again romance, she finally called in that favor.”

You were laughing still as you told the story. It felt like it was only yesterday when it happened, your one armed cohort storming towards you on the satellite, asking for your help in ridding herself of Cronus once and for all. “I helped her officially end it with Cronus and she owed me big time. She paid me back a few years later, but as she did she swore to me that neither she nor any of her descendants would ever owe a damn thing to an Ampora ever again.”

Dirk was giving you that almost smile he did when he was unsure of just how much of a reaction to give to something. You didn’t care though, because your other officers were listening too and you could see them smirking. They clearly understood the implications of the story already. Some had probably heard the story told before, as it was one of your favorite Vriska tales. “Vriska would be spinning in her grave if she could see Aranea now. I don’t know who she’d be more furious with, Aranea or me.” You laughed at this.

Once you’d calmed down, you told your navigations officer to change course to Venus. He replied that he was already on it and you praised him for it. It was a good day on the bridge. Aranea had brought some much needed levity into your life.

 

* * *

 

The Alpheus loomed above the Mesosoma as it entered the light gravitational field of Venus. As they moved simultaneously over the planet, two enormous ships made of metal and wiring, a third, smaller ship careened as fast as it could away from them.

The Metasoma, the detachable second half of the Mesosoma, had no warp drive. It’s mass was nearly entirely comprised of a multitude of weapons from missile launchers to lasers and more. The crew of fifteen members was two times as many as were needed, and three times more than the living quarters available. The humans inside, however, made due with the small space as they wove through the void.

Sitting cross legged on a box behind the two pilot chairs, Rosie made minor adjustments to her plan in her mind. The Metasoma wouldn’t be able to escape the solar system on its own. For that, they would need a larger ship.

The only place where they could procure such a ship, without returning to Aranea and taking the Mesosoma from her, was Ganymede.

Dave lounged against one of the back walls, watching as Mars grew close in the view screen. He had his knees drawn up and his arms resting on top of them as he watched. Mars looked as red as it he’d seen in pictures from his childhood. He could almost remember the glossy paper of a science textbook that showed a picture of each of the planets in the solar system.

The strange planet that Holdfast orbited was nothing to him compared to these planets. He had walked on the moon. He had seen the earth from space. He had watched Mercury pass the sun and Venus and Earth and now Mars. All on their way to Ganymede.

Ganymede. An _inhabited_ moon of _Jupiter_.

Out of habit, Dave didn’t cry, but his heart ached. Jade had been ripped forward in time with him, so she had been able to see these things, right? She must have been. She had even lived on other planets… But John and Rose…

John who looked at the sky with such longing. John who fell from a tree and caught himself on a breath of wind. John who was the first to realize just how special all four friends were. John who took the first leap of faith and stepped off the top of Dave’s apartment building so he could learn to fly.

Rose’s eyes had seen John fly. She could see beyond the moment they were living in and had a hand in convincing them of their own power. Did Rose see this moment? Did she see what happened? Did she have any idea? After Dave and Jade were lost, did she see them? She must have. Her own great granddaughter was here in the same ship as Dave. Sitting on a box with a computer on her knees and her braided hair pulled back from her face. Rosie was Rose reborn, as far as Dave could tell.

How much did Rose see? How much did she prepare for?

Mars loomed before them now, radiant and red. Minutes later, at Rosie’s command, they slowed down significantly and lurked in the shadow of the red planet. Someone entered the small bridge, asking what was the plan now and Rosie turned to regard them with those same violet eyes that Rose had been born with.

“We wait. Alpheus will be passing soon enough. We’ll approach Ganymede at the same time so there are no questions and no suspicion. Get some sleep and be prepared.” She turned to look back at the view port. “I want everyone to do their best to survive while we’re on Ganymede. It isn’t going to be easy.”

The feeling in the bridge was somber. Dave drew his knees tighter to himself and, while crossing his arms, rested his hands on either shoulder. Eridan. Eridan was on the Alpheus. Eridan with his human sacrifice. Eridan with his human weapon. Eridan with his human guard. Eridan with the High Empress’s cosmic bomb.

Dave looked at the back of Rosie’s head and, like he would with his best friend Rose, he put his faith in her.


	5. A Scorpion's Temper

Commander Aranea Serket stared moodily at the display window in the small but comfortably decorated visiting room. It was one of the few on board your ship. The Alpheus was hardly a pleasure cruise, after all, even if you’d spent the last few years in known space and out of direct conflict. She turned her head slightly when you entered the room, giving you a profile of her narrowed eyes and pouting lips, but she didn’t otherwise acknowledge you.

You admired the display on the window. Currently it was set to project the true outside of the ship. The surface of Venus burned in as a dome across the bottom of the screen. The planet had been inhospitable when the humans had explored it and had remained so when the Empire had assumed control of the solar system. No one went to Venus by choice. There was nothing there.

Stepping up beside Aranea, you keep your hands behind your back and announce to the room, “Computer, change the display to E.A.B. zero zero.”

There was a chime and the screen flickered. Venus and the space around it faded from view. They were replaced by the white snow of a tundra and the deep blue of a night sky. The aurora borealis danced across the sky, a shimmering, living thing that shown blue and green in its ephemeral way. The sight relaxed the tension in your shoulders.

Aranea turned fully to look at you. Her eyes were narrowed. “I thought you would be below taunting those who come to you for assistance, Admiral.”

You gave her a temperate smile. “The northern lights taunt you? I had no idea you had such familiarity with one of Earth’s rarer beauties.”

The muscles of her jaw flexed as she clenched them together. She looked away from you and said, “Dismiss your shadow so we can talk in private.”

You looked at the cool disgust on her face before you turned and lifted your hand. “Dirk, go see what Roxy is doing. I’ll summon you later.” He stood near the door, having entered just behind you as he had taken up doing since the fight with Roxy.

He bowed after only a moment of hesitation. When he was gone, Aranea gave a little sigh and turned back to the window. “Your technicians have reviewed my ship’s systems, have they not? You must see now that my earlier claims were not an exaggeration.”

“They are not. I am surprised to see how much was gutted with the removal of the Metasoma, however. I thought the whole nature of your ship was that it could separate and survive in its parts. I believe you described it once as a hive that held one wasp of great strength, yet it seems to behave more like the honeybee.” You lift your hand and curl it around an imaginary organ, “Able to attack just once before losing its organs to the yank of the stinger.”

The dull flush of blue on her cheeks was hardly attractive, but the bright fury in her eyes was a delight. You continue to smile at her because black taunting a Serket was still one of your favorite past times, when the moment was right for it. This seemed like to be as good a one as any. “There were adjustments made to the connections.” She held her hands in front of her in tight fists. She didn’t take her eyes off of you, though. “Before we could enter the space between Earth and Venus to warp, the ones who stole the Metasoma sabotaged the Mesosoma. I ordered us to enter warp and that was the moment that they detached. We were ripped out of warp seconds after we entered it. We dropped out in the outer edge of Venus’s gravitational pull and that is the only fortunate thing of the whole experience.”

You nod. Any longer and she wouldn’t have been just in the orbit she would have been phased into the planet itself. “Seems like a lot of effort to get you out of the way, Commander. Tell me, who would you take on a vacation to Earth that would betray you this way?”

Her hands flexed. You could hear her taking in deep breaths and letting them out, slowly. She looked away from you and stared at the display. You arched an eyebrow and waited for her admission or for her words saying she could not say.

You could wait for her. Not long, but you could wait. You spent most of your life waiting.

“Humans.” She finally said the word. She glanced over her shoulder as though she expected someone to walk into the room in the next moment. Then she turned towards you and stepped nearer.

You lifted both brows up in surprise as she reached out her hand and clutched your arm. “Human rebels did this to me, Eridan.”

There was a moment that you blinked at her, stunned into silence. Not because of her words but because of her tone, her actions. She engaged a deeper level of intimacy with you in this moment than another troll had in a long time. Dipping your head slightly, you turned more towards her. “I was unaware that you had human rebels in your companionship, Aranea. Please explain.”

Her gaze never left yours. Her fingers grew tighter on your arm. “I was unaware as well. Some were my slaves and others freed humans who swore oaths of loyalty to me so that I would allow them passage aboard my ship to their homeworld. They wished to visit and I had business there. They offered the work of their minds in exchange.”

 _Scientists._ _She took human scientists to Earth. Why?_

You lift one hand and put it over hers. She jumps a little at the touch but then leans in more. “Do any humans remain on your ship?”

“No. She took them all.”

“She who?”

Aranea turned her head away. Her fingers dig into your arm. You smooth your hand over hers and then up her forearm slightly. She jumps again and turns to look at you with wide eyes. You wonder when it was the last time a troll had touched her so intimately. She seemed, on Holdfast, as you were on Alpheus; a leader to trolls with humans as lovers. Her lips parted in her quick breath and she whispers. “She might hear if I speak her name. She gets her ears into every ship that comes close to her and we are still in the same solar system. Only with the Mesosoma can the Metasoma warp. She is as stuck here without me.”

“And she will not divine you are talking about her if you do not use her name?” A bubble of a memory floats up in your mind and you can’t help the snort of laughter, “So, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, you took her and others to Earth and upon leaving it she betrays you. Why did you take her there in the first place? What was your business there?”

“I traffic in goods and services,” Aranea said harshly, “Including those of the flesh such as humans. What do you think I was doing upon the Earth?”

 _Anything but trafficking humans_ , came the flicker of a thought in your mind but you pushed it away with an easy smile. “One must always be tending to the source of their product, of course. I understand.” Her grip grew lighter and you stilled your hand so that it lay curled over hers. “Are the repairs to your ship the only things that you wish for my aid in? Or do you desire something more?”

This time the flush she gives is without the blotchy look of anger. It pours across her cheeks in a flood of blue. “I… Eridan…” It’s indeed pretty but not the shade that you prefer.

You smile and lean in further, “Because, of course, it is within my power to hunt down a human rebel ship lurking in this solar system and bring justice down upon their heads. There is only so much space that they can hide in and the Alpheus is adept in hunting.”

“Yes. Of course it is.” She murmured as if recalling the same legend that made you name your ship. “With the proper repairs, I can return to Holdfast with the Mesosoma unattached. Wouldn’t it be difficult to bring the Metasoma through space to me? Do you have space in your hangar for it?”

“Ah. There is that,” You replied. A steel and silver box loomed in your mind for a moment but you dismissed it with a little shake of your head. “I do not, in fact, have that space and will not until I reach Ganymede. I took on some extra cargo when I came across the Basteta a while ago.”

“The Basteta?” Aranea recoiled, withdrawing her hand to press it against her chest. “What do you mean?”

For a moment, you close your eyes. You didn’t know she had any connection to Equius or his crew or you might have mentioned it earlier. Indeed, the wound was still a raw one to you. Opening your eyes you look away from her. The Northern Lights dance and soothe you. “We found it gutted in space a while ago. Captain Zahhak and all but one of his crew was dead. The ship was ripped open from the inside out and debris drifted all around it. We collected all that we could, the bodies, supplies and their own cargo, but had to leave the ship behind for drones to deal with.”

Aranea’s breathing was shallow and fast. “Who survived?”

You looked at her and saw her eyes wide, her fingers curled at her throat like she was trying to hold back her own voice. “A human slave,” You say slowly, “She was Zahhak’s personal attendant. Her name is-”

“Jane.” Aranea supplied.

You step into her personal space. She takes a faltering step back but you follow until you’ve crowded her against the display window. The green of the aurora flickers across her horns and her glossy black hair. “You know that human? Did you provide her for Equius? What can you tell me about her? Did she receive her bionic enhancements and replacements before or after you sold her to him?”

Aranea replied as quickly as you had asked the questions. “I sold her to him years ago. I can’t tell you much because it was a long time ago. I might have records of the sale but not of her personality. It became clear early on that Captain Zahhak had no desire to return her, ever, and so I had no need to keep more detailed records of her in order to sell her again. Any records of her biological changes would have been in those records.”

“And you process so many humans that keeping the extensive detail about one you sold many years ago would be a waste of harddrive space.” You murmured, withdrawing from her a few steps. There was a bubble of thought in your head. It was rising, growing, but not quite… there. Not yet. If only you could hurry it along and grasp it in your hands-

“Of course. I wait at least five years, sometimes up to a decade, before removing those files. I process too many humans to allow that information to build up.”

Your eyes settled on the green of the aurora for a moment as you sought to keep the bubble of thought from escaping you. Distantly, you say, “How many workers will you need for your repairs and how long do you think you will need them? I have a tight schedule to keep.”

“As many as you can spare and for three days. Any longer than that and I’ll have to limp back to a station and have them do a real repair there.”

You finally turn your attention back to her because there’s a silence after her words that suggests she’s not done. You see her biting her lip and she stops quickly as you tilt your head to the side. “What is it?”

“Even if you returned the Metasoma to me, I don’t know if I would trust it after it’s been in _her_ hands. If you have to, perhaps, destroy it…” She twists her hands together and glances to the side. “I will not hold it against you, if you decide that get rid of her you  must destroy part of my ship. It is more important to me that she is killed than that I get my ship back.”

You blink at her, surprised. Vengeance was, of course, an essential part of being a troll. That was especially true for the highbloods where betrayal could inspire Rage and executing vengeance was a way to dispel that feeling. But you knew Aranea well enough, you thought, to know that she valued material goods over her emotions. In her own way, she was like Vriska with her treasure hunting and lore spinning.

To lose a part of her specially made ship, over the betrayal of a single human, no matter who else was on board that ship or what technology the ship had in itself… Was Aranea _that_ afraid of this human woman? Or was there something more?

“If that is the only course of action left to me…” you begin but stop because she’s reached out both hands now and has them pressed against your chest.

“Eridan. Listen to me.” Her eyes had a sheen to them that makes you hold your tongue. She was too lost in her anger to argue with. “That bitch deserves nothing more than to be sucked out into space and left there. She and all her rebellious little underlings can’t  be redeemed. She has bound them too tightly to recondition them. Kill them all. Blow up the Metasoma. Bring me back that video and I will give you anything you want in return.” She leaned in farther, dropping her voice down in pitch, _“Anything.”_

Her breath is cool against your lips. Her lashes flutter as she looks up at you. For a moment Vriska is driven from your mind as you reach up and hold Aranea’s arms, not pushing her away but not pulling her closer.

You look down into her eyes, which are dark with emotion.

_That is not lust in her face. You know what lust looks like. That is something else._

_You are holding a scorpion in your arms and it will sting you if you don’t let go. Carefully. Let. Go._

“When I have decided _exactly_ what I want from you,” You lean in, letting your lips almost touch hers, “I will let you know, Aranea. But for now let me help you and entertain myself with the fantasy of what you can provide me.”

She gave a low chuckle and pressed her lips against yours. You allowed the kiss, giving a little pressure in return but didn’t dare open your mouth.

When she withdrew, you gave her a little smile and reached up. Tucking a long lock of her dark hair behind her ear, you say, “I’ll have an escort take you down to the transportalizer and the workers assigned to you will meet you there.”

“Thank you, Admiral Ampora,” She whispered and gave a slight bow. You nodded your head to her and turned, leaving her in the room alone.

As you stepped out of the room, that bubble of thought rose to the surface of your mind and popped.

_How many human rebels have passed through her hands. Is Jane one? Is Dirk?_

* * *

The door to the main tech deck slid open with a little hiss. You stepped into the room, sweeping your gaze around and giving a little smile. The helmsmen in ancient days were bound trolls with their minds and powers tapped directly into the core of the ship. Since the First Fall, however, there simply wasn’t enough value in tying a troll to a ship so tightly. Instead, you had rooms such as these.

Cluttered with desks, chairs, with lines painted on the floor in red and blue to show the separation of zones, the walking areas, viewing areas and the neutral zones, a ‘tech deck’ or Helmsman’s Hold was filled with the kinds of trolls that once were strung up by cords and dissolved into the brain and power of a ship. On board your ship they were primarily yellow bloods.

Much like your mechanic officer Norton, who was taught by and followed in Zahhak’s footsteps, you liked the Captor Acolytes of the yellow blooded psionics.

One came up to you now, treading on the blue line that marked a transportation zone, and stopped in front of you. She had narrowed eyes and only two horns, but when she licked her lips, you saw a bifurcation of the tongue. “Yeah?”

You had to hold back a smile. The informal, almost rude tone of your helmsmen was part of their way. Captor had been an unwilling leader to his followers, but they tread after him doggedly anyway- even mimicking his behavior in many aspects. “I have a dual request for a pair or quartet of helmsmen that must be done as quickly as possible.”

“What kind of request?” her eyes glinted with interest, though. It was easy to get a Captorite to obey an order if you framed the question in the right way.

“Information seeking and infiltration detection.” You held up one hand for each of the two items, palm up, as though you held the words in your hands. “Are you available for this task or must I seek another?”

“I’m available. I’ll work with Hendes on it.” She whipped around, her short hair flaring around her head. “Hendes! Get your ass over here.”

Across the room, behind one of the low dividing walls that separated one station of computers and desks from another, a hand shot up with a crude gesture by way of acknowledgement. She grinned as she turned back around. “I am Niccol Tesela. What am I looking for, sir?”

You give a little smile. ‘Sir’ was a promising gesture from a Captorite. “While repairs are being done on the Mesosoma, Commander Serket’s ship, I want to know what she was doing on Earth. She insists it was business and I am curious to know what a remote human trafficker is doing, leaving her space station behind to do business on Earth. She should know that the population there can only be addressed and managed through proper channels. Ones that she does not have. I also want to know what her inventory holds, both before her trip to earth and after it. If there are discrepancies between the two I need to know what they are.”

Hendes had arrived as you spoke. He slouched his shoulders and was half a head shorter than Tesela. He had the double horns, though, two sets that curled back almost like the waves of the sea along his hair. “What’s the second request?”

“During my discussion with Serket, she was unwilling to speak a name because she claimed that it could be heard by that person, whether or not they were on the ship. This suggests that there is someone or something monitoring not only outgoing communication, but that internally.” You felt your lips curling a little into a nasty smile. “She said this to me while on my own ship. She was consumed with her anger towards those who betrayed her, yet she still felt this great fear. Find that monitoring system within the ship.”

They looked at you and then looked at each other. There was some grumbling, shifting of weight and then Tesela said, “We can find that first information easily. But the second? What if we find nothing. Will you believe it if we find nothing?”

“And if we do find it, what do we do with it? What if it is too tangle in to burn out?”

You fold your arms over your chest. “I will believe it if you show me you have searched everywhere. I will believe it if you have searched every device on the ship and still not located it. I want every connection checked. If you must isolate personal computers, then you must isolate personal computers.” They nod at you in silence. “If and when you do find it, I don’t want you to destroy it. I have an… idea what it is. If it is what I think it is, then I want you to isolate it and put it into something it can’t escape. Think of it like you’re putting it into a box.”

Now Hendes narrowed his eyes and leaned in. “You think you know what it is? What is it? Why hold back that information?”

You shrug a shoulder. “I don’t want to prejudice you. And I am-” You hesitate now because you had no desire to say the words you had been thinking out loud. But if you had to use them to convince the yellows, then say them you would. “I thought the source of them trustworthy, but I have my doubts about them now. From what I’ve heard, it is possible that the thing you will find infiltrating the ship is alive. A generated life. An artificial one.”

Both of them reeled back on their heels. You saw other yellows turn and look now, interest in their eyes. Looking over the room you speak a little louder. “If you accept searching for these things then let me know. I would like to put you two in charge of it, and whatever brainpower or permissions you need to complete your search will be granted to you to conduct it as swiftly and as thoroughly as possible.”

There was that moment of silent conversation between the two of them and then they turned back, in unison, and grinned. “Admiral, we will accomplish this task for you. We have only one question.” Tesela said, holding up a finger.

Hendes was the one who asked it though, leaning in as he did so, “Would you like a bow on the box or not?”

You grin back at them and say, “Why not two?”

* * *

“And that’s all it says, I swear.” Roxy’s breath is warmth and alcohol against your cheek. She’s leaning across the bar at you, her bright eyes as serious as you’ve ever seen them. It’s been a while since she’s been on the tending side of the bar, but with Jane tucked away onto the corner barstool and under Roxy’s eye, she’s been able to return to her registered duty. You’re sitting a few empty seats away from Jane and there’s no one else at the bar.

During the middle of the day, the place is mostly empty, except for a few trolls who have irregular shifts and like to spend some time unwinding at the tables around the room. You’ve been sent away from the Admiral’s presence again, this time before he went off to talk to his hivemind yellow bloods. It’s the second time in two days that you’ve been sent away, the first being during the conversation with Serket yesterday morning.

Fortunately, this has given you time to finally get Roxy to talk to you about what Rosie sent her. “Really?” You lift an eyebrow and get a sharp glare in return. “That’s it? That’s all it says?”

Roxy pulls back, folding her arms across her chest. She shrugs with one shoulder, “It’s a lot of code for a single line of instruction. That’s her way, Dirk, you know that.”

You drum your fingers on the counter a couple of times and then flatten them on the wood to make them still. You can’t show any more anxiety or aggression on the cameras than you have already. Even Roxy’s relaxing now, letting her face soften into a smile. “Yeah,” you reply after a while, “Mine was that way too. A lot of code for a single image.”

“The placement, right?” She cocked her head to the side. She unfolds her arms and reaches for her drink, tucked below the counter on her side. She cradles it in one long fingered hand. You nod to her question.

“So all we have to do is get there,” She murmurs to the glass, her lips barely moving. She glances over to Jane, but Jane’s got her eyes on the tablet in front of her. She’s been reading since you got to the bar and has barely touched her drink. “It won’t be any trouble to change the manifest for the Alpheus, but we’ll have to be quick to get the station to accept it to the right location.”

You can’t help the little smirk you give. “Hal will help with that. We’ll get the code written now and arm him with it. He’ll put it where it goes as soon as we’re in range.”

Roxy gives you a pretty smile. You reach out your hand and she puts hers in it. “Can you believe it, Dirk? It’s all happening so quickly now…”

You squeeze her hand, running your thumb across her knuckles. “Yeah.” You smile at her, “It’s almost over, everything we’ve worked for.”

Roxy’s laugh is bright as her eyes and she squeezes your hand back. “At last. At long last.” You think there are tears in her eyes but she doesn’t shed them. She just holds tightly onto your hand and smiles like the sun.

You lift your glass with your other hand in a silent toast. At long last, the fall of the Alternian Empire was within reach.


	6. Practical Consequences

In the middle of the night, you slowly open your eyes and listen. The Admiral lies beside you, his body cool, his breathing deep and even in his sleep. He’s got one arm tucked under his head and the other is on your hip. Since the fight with Roxy, she hasn’t spent the night with you but has been in her own quarters. You miss her in the middle of the night like this, because you like to get up and do things and she’s happy to take your place in keeping the Admiral warm while he sleeps.

His hand on you is light tonight. You roll from your side to your stomach and his hand slides across your bare back and onto the mattress. For several minutes you lay there, silent, breathing, waiting to see if he’ll reach for you in his sleep.

The Admiral continues to breathe deeply. His hand doesn’t even twitch.

Tucking your arms under your chest, you push yourself up, slowly. Sliding one leg back, and then the other, you climb out of the bed. Since he got the larger bed, made for all three of you to sleep in, he no longer had it wedged up against the wall, making it easier to slip out.

Your feet are silent on the floor and even though the room is lit by only a faint line of light where the walls meet the floor at the doorways, you can see enough to cross the room to the table that has your laptop and his husktop. Sliding into the chair, you flip open your laptop and wake it up. It takes seconds to get to the secondary OS and then another couple to get open the dialogue box.

Coding and hacking like this is mostly Roxy’s business, but she’s busy with Jane, or so she explained before you returned to the Admiral earlier. Maybe Jane is trustworthy, maybe she isn’t but Roxy doesn’t want to risk it. That and the trolls were paying more attention to her because she was tending Jane in the first place.

It’s no matter, though. You’re making up a little wedge of information for Hal. Rosie may have turned him into her digital weaponry, but you know the twists and turns of his software better than anyone else. You made him. More than that, you made him as a copy of yourself.

The room is quiet except for your typing fingers. Even your breathing is silent. Even the Admiral’s breathing is silent. You glance up at him, once, but the computer light has blinded you in the darkness. It takes a few blinks to see past it. He’s still prone in the bed, hasn’t moved an inch, so you duck your head back to your work.

With any luck you can get the program done in a single night. The sooner you could make it available to Hal, the sooner it can get to Ganymede and the sooner that-

“Dirk.”

Your hands freeze on your keyboard. For a moment, just a moment, you’re locked up from head to toe. Breath caught. Arms like stone. Eyes stuck on the blinking cursor. You swear you hear your neck creaking as you turn to look up. The Admiral was _just_ in his bed. You _just_ checked. You _just_ saw.

He stands on the opposite side of the table. There is no rusty sleepiness in his voice. He looks right at you and you know that he sees you, illuminated by the computer screen, frozen in front of him.

His hand curls over the top of your laptop’s screen and he draws the machine slowly away from you. Your hands have movement again but it's only to curl in on themselves. It’s been a few years but you still remember the threat he made to break your fingers back on Holdfast. He said then he only made a threat once. He hasn’t had to make any other threat since. You learned that lesson the first time and never forgot it. You don’t think he ever forgot it either.

He turns the computer around, looks at the screen and makes a disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. Your heart pounds in your ears. He doesn’t build code, doesn’t know what you were doing, if you can spin this somehow-

“I knew it.”

The laptop snaps shut, dousing you both in darkness. You blink, trying to get your night vision back. His eyes gleam in that low light. He can still see you, of course he can, he has all the advantages. You bring your hands closer to yourself. Anything but your hands. He can have-- He can break-- He can tear off anything but them. You’re useless to Rosie without them.

You try not to think about how much worse it’ll be for you when she finds out you’ve been caught using those dextrous fingers.

_But he doesn’t know what I was writing. He can’t know just from a glance. That isn’t his specialty. He’d have to get it analyzed and that would take hours and Roxy can get ahead of the programs. I just have to get a message to her and-_

“Fuck!”

The Admiral’s shout makes you jump. But his slammed fist on the table makes you act. You scramble up to your feet. You’ve been silent too long. You have to placate him. If he gets upset at you while Roxy’s away- If he just _kills_ you in his anger-

“Admiral, please,” you move quickly around the table. You hesitantly reach out to him. “Sir.”

His hand is cool as metal as it touches your cheek. He leans in. You can see him a little better now. His eyes gleam. You can see the flash of white of his teeth as he speaks. “Don’t you speak a lie to me, Dirk. Don’t you dare lie to me.”

“I won’t.” You’ll have to. “I never would.” If you want to survive, you must.

He laughs so softly that goosebumps rise on your skin. You jump when his other hand presses against your chest, over your heart. Your pulse is racing. You feel sweat prickle the back of your neck, send chills down your spine, dampen your palms. “You’re too much like him not to lie to me,” he whispers. Even without a name, you know exactly who he’s talking about.

That man. The one with the red eyes. The one whose name he calls you by when you’re cock deep in him. You lick your lips and lean into his touch. _If I can distract him--_ “I’m not always like him, sir. You know that. I’m not like him in the ways that matter.”

“And what ways are those?” He sounds distantly amused. His thumb strokes your cheek. You feel the edge of his claw against your skin under your eye. You swallow reflexively and do not pull away.

“I won’t leave your side. I won’t choose anyone else. I won’t love anyone else.” The words escape in a rush of desperation. _If I can make him forget the computer and focus on me instead--_ “I am yours and yours alone. I crave your attention. No one and nothing could ever take me from your side. You don’t just own my body, you own my heart.”

The heart that beats wildly in your chest, under his hand. You gaze up at his face with all the sincerity that you can muster. You reach up your hands and put them over his, pressing down, pressing his skin to yours. You have to convince him. You must make him believe. You must divert his thoughts from what you _were_ doing to what you _could be_ doing.

The Admiral takes in a deep breath and then lets it out, slowly. “Prove it.”

Immediately you turn your head and press worshiping kisses to his palm. They’re quick, fleeting, the only kind he allows you. You kiss each fingertip, the heel of his hand and then down to his wrist. At the same time you move, taking a small step forward, backing him towards the bed. With his hand on your chest, he has to move back or hold you still. After a moment of resistance, he steps back.

His eyes are on your face as you walk him back to the bed. Your blood is pounding in your veins and you know it won’t calm down until he’s asleep again, until you know you’ve survived the night. You have to get him asleep. You have to make him think it was all a dream. You’ll get a sopor patch on him as soon as you’ve fucked him and-

A surprised yelp escapes your throat as he grips you suddenly by the hair and by the shoulder and he twists you around. He all but throws you to the bed. You bounce, once, and then he is kneeling over you. He looms over you, eyes never wavering, as he says, “Computer, raise the lights by five degrees.”

The night gloom lightens to the sort of dusky twilight that usually only happens planetside. You swallow because now you can see his face better and there is no kindness to be found. His lips are pressed together. His brows drawn tight. His eyes are dark and you’re not sure if the spark in them is lust or rage or worse. His fingers slide from your hair and trail down your cheek, your jaw, to dance along your throat. Your pulse throbs under his fingertips.

You feel claws against your skin. Your breath catches in your throat. “Sir,” You find words somewhere in your brain and push them out of your too dry mouth, “How can I prove my words to you if you hold me captive so?”

“I’m not holding you captive,” The Admiral turns his head to the side. “Your fear is. Does your desire, your need for me, not survive in the face of the fear you have of me?”

The only point of contact are those fingertips at your throat. He’s let go of your shoulder. His knees are on one side of your body, not straddling you like you’d thought at first. You have full range of motion but you can’t move.

You have to move.

You have to.

He’s judging you.

This is an important moment.

You.

Must.

Move.

At last your muscles seem to respond. You curl your spine, rising up from the bed, turning, reaching for him. His hand slides away from your throat and you can’t help the grateful little noise you make. You reach for his waistband, for the pants that he wears to bed, and your fingers fumble at the buttons.

You pull the cloth open and stop. Your stomach plummets. He’s not even in the least interested. His bone sheath is smooth and seamless. There’s no scent of his nook, either, that salty aroma that you can always smell when you’ve worked his pants down. Helplessly, you look up at him and whisper, “Admiral. What do you want?”

“The truth,” he says. His face hasn’t changed. His hands rest easily at his sides. He’s breathing slow and deep, the same way he was when you thought he was asleep. Your blood runs cold at that realization. He hadn’t been asleep at all. Just deeply calm, breathing, laying there, _pretending_.

“The truth about what?” You will have to tell him something, but you must make him ask you specifically. You don’t know, entirely, what he suspects. You won’t just let your tongue get to wagging because you thought to seduce him and it failed utterly and you are terrified that he’ll lose his patience with you.

The Admiral sighs heavily. He finally closes his eyes and turns his head away. For a moment, you think he might not suspect anything beyond wondering what you were typing. A little flicker of hope sparks in your chest. It doesn’t last long in the face of his words.

Then he shakes his head, and looks back at you, saying, “Serket traffics in humans. She takes a handful of human scientists to earth, for _business_ , when she knows better even than I do the hassle and paperwork it takes to breed space born humans with Earth born ones. Besides, she isn’t a breeder and Earth humans aren’t for sale. She knows this. I know this. And then she tells me that the humans that have damaged her ship and have absconded with its lesser portion were rebels? The humans she brought with her to Earth are rebels to the empire?”

His eyes are narrowed. Your heart is hammering so hard in your chest that it hurts. Serket said all that? How could she? Why would she? After helping Rosie for _so long_ \-- What _happened_ on Earth?

“She gave Jane to Equius, years ago. And perhaps Equius did make those changes to her mind, but perhaps he didn’t.” The Admiral’s voice is soft. His fingers are on your cheek again, smoothing over the skin gently. You can hardly breathe. “And Serket gave me you. So tell me the truth, Dirk. Tell me where your allegiance lies.”

You speak without hesitation, knowing that hesitation will come off as a lie or- worse- a weakness. “With you, Admiral. I am in your service, always, until you dismiss me.”

The Admiral snorts. “And yet you bend to Roxy’s will and her position is lower than yours.”

Confusion is a nice change to the fear that has been hammering at your chest. You make yourself press into the touch of his hand. You must show that you are his just as much as you say you are, “What do you mean, sir? Did you not instruct me to listen to her in lieu of your orders?”

“In lieu of them, yes, but not in deference to them. There have been very few instances of inter-human aggression on my ship, Dirk, and I remember them all very well. The one that happened between you two happened before my eyes.” His hand has grown still. The pressure of his fingers increases. The claw on his thumb presses into the skin under your eye, but does not break it. yet.

“I e-explained that,” your voice falters and you close your eyes for just a second, just long enough to recover from that trembling. Looking back up you continue, “I told you why we fought. I told you my history with artificial intelligence and why that prejudiced me against Jane.”

“And I still believe that much of that story is true,” he said, “But that does not change the fact that when I demanded answers, you took your cue not from me, but from her.”

“That is because she is so much more experienced than I,” you say quickly. You have to tell some of the truth if it is what will save your life, or at the very least, your eye. His hand still hasn’t moved from where his thumb is against your cheek and his fingers along the side of your face. “She knows you much better than I and has been teaching me all the best ways to please and pleasure and treat you, sir. I look to her naturally as she has become like a mentor to me and she would know best how to make you calm and how to assure you.”

“True,” the Admiral conceded. His other hand came up and ran through your hair. Your skin prickled and a shiver ran over your body as you felt the claws on that hand as well, scratching lightly at your scalp. In any other context, you’d take it as foreplay into sex.

In this context, you don’t want to know what that kind of gesture would lead into.

“You must wish that she were here now. That she was not still out of my favor.” Through your hair that hand moved, from the top of your head to the base of your skull, claws prickling your skin all the way. “That you do not have to be the one to suffer my questions. Because you think she would know what to do, what to say, to calm me down again.”

Numbly, you hear your mouth form the word, “Yes.”

“There’s a problem with that desire.” He cradles your head in his hands. Neither one of them is moving now. You lay there, limp, non-threatening, vulnerable. You look up at him, begging silently for his mercy.

“What is that problem, Admiral?” You ask, when he’s said nothing and you know he wants you to ask.

“I am perfectly calm. In fact, I do not think I have been this alert and calm in many, many years.” He’s smiling at you, but it’s not one of his half dozen smiles you’ve learned to recognize. You’ve never seen this expression on his face before.

“What do you mean, Admiral?” Because you know he likes talking about himself and the more he talks, the longer he talks, the longer you have to figure out what to say to get him to let go of your head.

“Hundreds of years,” he whispers, “I was asleep for hundreds of years. After the First Fall. After the rise of the twin empresses. After I thought I lost him. After I was absolutely sure that there was no way he could have survived, even if he’d managed to escape the initial destruction and culling of your homeworld. It was all a haze of battles and ships and endless, endless space.”

His hands pull, so gently, and you push yourself up to rise with the grip. Confusion spikes your fear again and this time a little fluttering of hope stirs in your belly. He’s gone a little odd again, the way he sometimes talks about the past, or the trolls he used to know but has since outlived, or the way he’ll sometimes talk about that place called Houston.

“But it wasn’t the truth,” the Admiral’s eyes slide closed. His smile turns into something broken and sharp, like he’s swallowing down a handful of glass shards. “No one likes to tell me the goddamn truth, do they? None of you think that I deserve the truth.”

You’re on your knees in front of him. He holds your head in front of his, just a few inches away but his arms lock up tight and you couldn’t move even if you want to.

His eyes open and you flinch. You want to run. You need to escape. Those are not the eyes of a sane troll. He is about to _kill you._

“You’re going to tell me the truth, Dirk,” His voice was low and full of violent promise. “ _All_ of the truth that you know. But I promise that when I’m done with you, I’ll bury your body on Earth next to that lying bitch who should have told me _he wasn’t dead.”_

No. He’s not about to kill you.

He’s about to do something much, much worse.

* * *

There’s something viscerally satisfying about throwing a body to the ground.

When Dirk lands with a solid, meaty _thwack_ on the floor, it brings a smile to your lips. He groans and turns, rolling onto his side and instinctively curling up to protect his organs from damage. You have no interest in those, yet, because you simply do not have the tools to heal internal bleeding or ruptures in your bathroom.

But what you do have- water and strength and time- you have in spades.

While you’ve never had to suffer the agony of drowning yourself, nor the painful feeling of being brought back from the edge of that, you do have some experience with swallowing water instead of air. Not only that, you have experience in helping someone else recover from that same sort of mishap.

The fact that it was _Dave_ who taught you that valuable lesson only makes this so much sweeter.

Dirk has always been a replacement for Dave and while, at one point, you considered him able to soothe that aching, burning hole in your chest that Dave left behind, you now understand that he never could have.

A wound that you had forgotten about for over four hundred years. A wound that never, ever, was going to heal.

“Get up, Dirk,” You say to the prone figure. You’ve barely touched him yet. If you stopped now he’d only have a few bruises on his arms and perhaps the back of his neck where you grabbed him.

He obeys you, which is smart of him, but his orange eyes never look up at you. That is also smart. Without any shades to cover his eyes, ones that Dave favored and almost always wore but Dirk never had the opportunity to use, you'd see whatever emotion was boiling through him at the moment. On your bed, all they held was fear.  Eventually his fear will burn out in rage, if he is anything like the man you attempted to replace with him, and then that will turn sourly back into fear again, and eventually, despair. But you’re not there. Yet.

“Get up and get in the tub.”

He obeys you again and with a grim smile, you get to work.

* * *

Hours later you walk alone onto the bridge, nodding absently to the officers that salute you. You take your usual seat and sink into it. You cross one knee over the other and lean back. You stare at the display window, which is primarily the view of Venus and Mesosoma along with smaller displays of different functions of the ship. Your breathing is purposefully deep and slow. You rest your hands, empty, on the arms of your chair and stare out at space.

It’s quiet on the bridge. You can feel the quick, curious glances of your officers. Your usual shadow is gone and you’ve yet  to explain why. You ignore them. You stare at Venus’s surface for a long time. Somewhere along the line, you turn your attention to the Mesosoma.

Your claws dig into the arms of your chair. You become aware that your breathing has turned ragged, harsh.

You close your eyes and turn your head away. You take in a deep breath, hold it, let it go. No. You do not hate Serket for what she has revealed to you. You don’t hate her for putting Dirk on your ship. You don’t hate her for bringing rebels to Earth, to letting them loose in the same solar system as the High Empress and Low Empress.

You hate her for a much more personal and petty reason than that.

You hate her because you gave Dave to her and she probably turned him to the rebels. She was going to get him killed.

_I gave him away as a slave, that’s at least as bad as getting him killed. He won’t forgive that. He’ll never forgive me anything again._

You close your eyes again.

“Ahem. Admiral?”

Blinking your eyes open, you turn away from your thoughts and from the display. Tesela stands to the side of your chair. Hendes hovers at her shoulder. They both look like they haven’t left their computers in three days, thin and strung out and with eyes too wide for the well rested. It’s the second time that morning that you’ve seen them, the first being when you stepped by the tech deck hours ago to give them Dirk’s personal computer. It’s not like he was going to need it anymore.

“Yes?”

Tesela holds out a slim tablet. You take it from her and look at the screen. There are two icons. One is labeled: _Inventory._ The other: _Humanoid A.I._  The icons themselves are little bows. One is blue. One is red. You reflexively smile at the sight of them. “That was quick.”

“The computer you gave us had not only part of the origin code of the Hal program, sir, but a ready way to box and unbox it. We just unstitched it from the main systems and sent it back to where it belonged.” Tesela rubs the back of her neck with one hand and absently flexes her wrist and fingers of her other hand. You recognize the motion as someone fighting off stiff wrists and carpal tunnel.

“The inventory was hardly worth the request,” Hendes said suddenly, leaning over slightly to see past Tesela’s shoulder. “Serket’s a merchant troll, after all, so she keeps open and ready records of everything.” His eyes gleam at that. You eye him for a moment and then let yourself smile, showing teeth. He mimics the expression.

“I hope you found records worth your efforts, then.”

“Oh sir, did we _ever_.” Hendes bounces on his toes a little bit. Tesela rolls her eyes and elbows him. He winces and glares at her.

“Show him. Then you can gloat properly.” She snaps at her companion.

“Yes. Do show me something interesting.” You lay the tablet in your lap. You’ll review the inventory in a while. You’ll leave Hal alone. You’d rather not have it on your ship at all, but contained on one device is better than loose in your systems.

Hendes bobs his head in a nod and then turns away. He goes over to a console where another troll has slid out of their seat and is standing by. Hendes doesn’t bother sitting down. His fingers flash over the keyboard and the display window flickers from its view of Venus to one of an interior security camera.

As soon as it focuses, you lean forward in your chair, your breath caught in your throat. You hear gasps and small cries of surprise from a few of your officers.

“That’s fucking impossible,” You think you’re the one who says that. There might be others echoing your sentiments though.

Aranea Serket sits close with a human woman. They are both on a couch, near enough to each other that their knees are touching, they hold each other’s hands. They face each other, sitting at an angle to do so. Aranea looks like she’s been at some party or event, with a backless, sparkling gown and her hair in thick curls around her shoulders. The woman sitting with her looks just as finely dressed, with her blond hair wispy and feathery around her face, her throat. Her eyes are a brilliant lavender color.

Your heart clenches in your chest with the same tightness as it did when Dirk confessed his affiliation to the rebellion. _“Rose.”_ The name rips itself out of your throat. “It can’t be.”

“Sir,” Tesela is near you, leaning close, whispering, “It isn’t. Just listen to their conversation.”

The volume increases, because of Hendes you suppose, but it’s hardly necessary. The bridge is utterly silent now. You’re not the only one leaning forward and listening.

 _“You have to come to Earth with me, I insist. Have you ever been? Have you ever seen the skies of your homeworld?”_ Aranea stroked the lookalike-Rose’s hands with her own. The camera angle only caught her profile and thus only the edge of the large eyed, bright smile she gave the human. _“You can go and see the graves of the human heroes of the First Fall. Your ancestor is buried there, you know, we can go visit her grave, we can see the world she fought to protect.”_

 _“Earth is not a place to go to on a whim,”_ You shiver hearing the lookalike’s voice. It sounds so much like Rose’s that they blend in your mind. You don’t think you’d be able to tell them apart. If she just changed her hairstyle, a little, then you think she’d look just like Rose did.

A part of your mind sees how much she looks like Roxy but you shove that thought far away. You’ve already had to deal with Dirk being a rebel, you don’t want to contemplate Roxy being the same. Besides, she’s been a part of your crew for years and she belongs to the military, not to you, no matter what your quadrant status with her was.

 _“I know. It’s a dangerous place now with the drones and the shuttles and the space stations,”_ Aranea waves one hand dismissively and then clasps the woman’s hands tightly again. She lifts them up, holding them close to herself, _“But I’ll be with you. I can protect you with my name. No one asks me why I have so many humans around, you know that. You’ve used my protection for years. Holdfast won’t be any different than Earth. We can go together and we both can do the research we need. You so you can find out the truth of the First Fall and me so I can find the God Beds.”_

 _“I can find the truth through other means. There were those who were alive during that time. It’s not worth the risk, Aranea, and you know it isn’t._ ” The woman doesn’t pull her hands away, though, just regards Aranea with that calm, distant expression. It makes your breath flutter in your lungs. Rose gave you that look so many times when you spoke to her of your desperate situation. She was always there to speak with but never really _there_ , not for you. She gave so much more emotion to Dave and John and Jade, never to you.

It never hurt to think that before, but a lot of things have begun to hurt again that you had forgotten about.

 _“There is one more thing…”_ Aranea leaned in, her voice dropping lower now. The lookalike lifts one eyebrow at the Commander’s action but doesn’t otherwise move a hair. _“The empresses will both be in the solar system at the time that I’ve planned to go to Earth. They’ll be around Jupiter. They’re going to be exchanging duties. One crown for another. Low to High and High to Low, as they do at their whim._

The human considers this, her lips slightly pursed. _“How sure are you of this information?”_

 _“I intercepted the first transmission after I picked up that human boy, you know the one.”_ Aranea turned her head to the side, facing the camera more. She had her eyes downcast, her lips turned in a sly smile, _“The one that is the era companion to that woman I came across years ago, Jade Harley.”_

You flinch so badly that the tablet slips from your lap and you scramble after it. “Turn it off.”

“Admiral?”

You leap to your feet. “Turn it off. Turn it the fuck off right now!”

The screen freezes with the Commander’s face sly and the lookalike leaning in slightly, mouth open to speak, finally interested. Your breath is harsh again. You gave her Dave and she already had _Jade?_

You were going to kill Serket. You were going to wrap your hands around her throat and squeeze the very life out of her and then you were going to-

“Admiral?”

You have an audience. You shudder and reign in your rage. You put your hand over your face and stand there, controlling your breathing. Your world is tilting, spiraling, twisting, imploding. One universe is smashing into another. The gravitational pull of the centers are colliding. The scraps of useless, too far off stars like bits of information that you thought certain and eternal are being flung to the side. Everything is changing and changing abruptly.

Lowering your hand from your face, you realize your shivering like you’re freezing. You clutch the tablet in one hand but it suddenly doesn’t matter what is in the inventory of her ship anymore. Her ship is never leaving the solar system. It’s never leaving Venus’s orbit.

You think of the steel and silver box in the hangar of your ship. You think of the fact that there were once two of them and something opened the first and left the second. You think of the way the Basteta was torn open from the inside out and all of her crew scattered to the bleakness of space. If only you could leave that little present with her. You can’t think of a better fate for Serket, but you’ll have to. Cratae will want to know what you did with the box if it suddenly is missing from _your_ inventory.

“Admiral?”

Shaking your head, you turn. Your officers stare at you, eyes wide, waiting, silent. Tesela is the one who has spoken to you, hand hesitantly reaching out to you. She catches your gaze and lets her hand drop.

“Serket is conspiring with rebel humans against the empire,” You speak the words as flat as you can manage. Your body still quivers like a rope under too much tension. “She claimed that human rebels, that she brought to Earth, are the ones who sabotaged her ship and left her stranded at Venus. Hendes,” you turn to the troll and he looks back at you warily, “How many other videos did you find where these two were speaking? Why did you chose this one to show me?”

“Dozens, sir,” he said quickly, “And because the humans they speak of, or at least the male human that they spoke of and say more of later in the video, is the one that was the stowaway on the ship, sir. Everyone knows that there was something off about him. Oh. And because of that bit about the Empresses, sir. I don’t think anyone’s supposed to know that except ones like you, sir, who are going to be attending the transition.”

You nod to him. “Valid reasons. Do any of the videos reveal the human woman’s name?”

“Rosie is what Commander Serket calls her, sir.” Tesela says this time, her voice just as quick as Hendes.

You look around the bridge again. You can see other trolls trembling as you are. They’re picking up on your emotions, your anxiety, your anger. You turn away from the yellow bloods and look at the screen again.

“Every video that Serket has with that- that _woman._ I want a copy of each one by the end of the day.” Slowly, you sit back down in your chair, hands no longer shaking, but heart still pounding in your chest. “Careful when you copy them, Tesela,” You add before she’s left the bridge. “I don’t want any contamination from Serket’s computers to our own.”

“Of course, Admiral.”

You dismiss the yellows with a wave of your hand. A tentative peace settles on the bridge and you reach for your personal tablet, set to one side of your seat. You had a brief but important message to send.

Serket was not getting away with her secrets.

_Vris, sorry about your descendant, but I’m sure you understand why I must do this._

* * *

“That’s not right…”

You look up from the tablet you’ve been reading from. You’ve been doing a lot of that. You prefer it to Roxy’s method of recovery, which is lots of drinking and talking about the dead troll you love or the currently distant one she loves. She’s sitting on her bed, larger than the beds of other slaves that you’ve seen, as big as a Captain’s bed, and on her lap is her computer. She’s been working on a code for most of the morning, hardly even touching the drink that’s resting at her knee.

“What’s not right?” You roll over from your stomach to your side and get a better look at her. She looks older than you do, though part of that is that her stress has always been greater than yours. You were, after all, only a vector. She’s an actual virus herself and has been working from the inside of the troll ship for over a decade.

“I’ve finished the code but… Hal’s not here.” Roxy mumbles the word into her fingers. She gropes for her drink. You reach over and push it into her expectant hand. She sips from it thoughtfully. “I know Hal was here yesterday. I contacted him to see if Dirk had made the code or not and he said that Dirk hadn’t. And, well…”

“Well?”

“He said that Dirk had _started_ it but got interrupted. Dirk must have been working on it at night and Eridan probably woke up and wanted him or something.” Roxy shakes her head slowly, “But that doesn’t explain…”

You pillow your cheek on your arms, looking up at her. “Then we should ask Dirk what happened. Isn’t he with Eridan?”

Roxy glances to you, giving you a wry little smile. “You shouldn’t call him that, you know. He’s touchy about who gets to use his name. I’ve set a bad example for you, callin’ him that in front of you. He’ll like it better if you call him Admiral. Gives him some distance. He likes that.”

You blink at her. You don’t call him Eridan because of Roxy. You call him that because that is what Equius would call him. You have to remember Equius in every way that you can. You have to carry his legacy, now that he’s gone forever. “We should find Dirk and ask him about what happened,” you say again, instead of anything about Eridan’s name, “He can explain.”

“Yeah. I’ll message him to visit me in the bar again tonight. Or maybe I’ll just swing by when they’re eating. Eridan can’t stay mad at me forever, you know,” Roxy’s still smiling at you but there are shadows in her eyes like she doesn’t quite believe what she’s saying. You think that’s worse than just lying, because it’s like you’re telling half a truth to yourself as well as one to someone else. Equius always said to believe whole truths, not half truths. It was inefficient to do something halfway. “He needs me as his moirail. He needs me, Jane.”

She says that like she doesn’t quite believe it either. You nod, though, because if she needs to believe it to make Eridan believe it, then she should. Roxy’s explained a lot to you. Eridan is important. He’s necessary. Rosie needs him and therefore he can’t be led astray now.

“Send Dirk the message. I’m sure he’ll meet with us as soon as he’s able.” You smile at Roxy and the worry lines fade a little from her forehead, “And maybe he’ll bring Eridan along too. You’re right, he needs his moirail. They are very important to trolls.”

Roxy drains the rest of her drink and nods to you. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” She types away at her computer, one handed, and you return to the book on your table, smiling. At least you can help her, even if you couldn’t help Equius survive.

* * *

Norton paused as he looked over the new transmission from the Alpheus. He hadn’t _expected_ anything, of course, but he had left his communication array open just in case. Admiral Ampora had been more temperamental in the last few years and one had to adapt to their superior officer’s moods if one was to survive. Now that modification to his own awareness of his Admiral’s moods was paying off.

The message that he received was a simple one. It was three sentences long and came from the isolated transmission of the Admiral himself, with all the signatures and identifications that were unique to his private messages. Thus, Norton knew as he opened the message on his tablet, this was neither a hoax nor the result of industrious hacking. Messages like these could only be sent from the Admiral’s private communication devices and, Norton noticed with the lifting of an eyebrow, this one was sealed with not one, but _two_ unique thumb prints.

A simple but heavily secured message. One that was not to be ignored or questioned.

Norton scrolled to the message itself and read it in silence.

 _Commander Aranea Serket has assisted human rebels in attempting to overthrow the Empire._  
_Perfect the work that was begun by the humans who sabotaged her ship.  
Fling her and her wretched ship into a dwarf star._

 

 _Well_ then.

Norton closed the message, locking it with his own thumb print. No one on the Mesosoma with him needed to see such a thing, not even the two other crew members he had with him. He could do all the calculations on his own.

Smiling, Norton turned back to his lunch. He had always wanted to know what would happen if someone dropped a ship out of warp launch and directly into the heart of a star.

It was only a shame that he wouldn’t be around to see it happen in person, but one could not have everything, after all. He’d just have to pick a sun that he could gather data from later. He was almost certain the Admiral would oblige his curiosity, once he knew why.


End file.
